Those Tones Tho…
I’m a real sucker for some quality tones on an image. I love playing around with editing styles and experimenting with color combinations to really get a beautiful, visually-appealing shot. I’ve always been fascinated with the feel of older film photographs and have spent some time trying to replicate that tone with digital. One type of older photography style I’m enamored with is from waaaay back and it’s called wet plate photography. Wet plate photography is a 19th-century photographic process that involves coating a glass or metal plate with light-sensitive chemicals and exposing it in a camera while still wet. The resulting image is then fixed, washed and dried to produce a positive print. It is considered one of the earliest forms of photography and is known for its unique look, with rich tonality, faded highlights and deep blacks. I think it looks absolutely amazing for portraits and it’s such a vibe.
I decided to go back and play around with some photographs I did for a birthday photoshoot a few years ago. For some of the images I wanted a nice honey/rose sepia tone with the real faded and washed highlights reminiscent of the wet plate style photographs. For the color pictures, I experimented with a nice semi-warm tone with subtle magenta highlights that I found complimented the sepia pictures quite nicely. Overall, the edits are a little less punchy and lack the color saturation that I’m normally accustomed to, but I think they turned out looking not too shabby! These tones look great on a bright sunny evening which would definitely work well for family, engagement and wedding shots. I also think these tones could really look amazing for more of a dark & moody romantic look when it’s cloudy out!
