Learning people stock I Photographer Elina Manninen

I love to photograph people - but my stock collection is mainly small stuff photographed on a table with a 100mm lens. I like that too :) but I also wanted to know what to do with people. I have had two people come into my life that are both top stock photographers and it has been so great learning what they do - Kati Molin in Finland who is so talented with 'the small stuff on the table' and Erik Reis in Portugal who is so good with people. Thank you both :). I know myself I'm more of an 'artist' than a stock photographer, but one of my goals this coming year is to grow my stock portfolio to a size that keeps ticking in the background when I concentrate on my other projects :).

Also after just using Bridge and Camera Raw to edit my raw files I'm now using Lightroom (finally :)). I really like it and now after talking with my designer Pedro Reis and Erik my workflow and filing are a lot better as well. The amount of large image files going through my computer is going to be a big mess if my filing system is even a bigger mess so it feels like I've cleaned my house after 'cleaning' the way I work.

With Photoshop I've always been the 'natural girl' :). I've done basic adjustments to colour and lightness and contrast in Bridge (and now Lightroom) and saved as tiff's or jpeg's and maybe cleaned the image a bit in Photoshop. I always do what I feel that invidual image needs, I very rarely use preset actions made by someone else. I usually like my images warm and colourful :). For studio work I asked for Erik's advice for cleaning up the white background images and here are a few tips a learned from him:

This is the original, basic adjustments done and saved as jpg (usually for stock I always save as tiff's and only the final image will be a jpg file).

To clean the white background if needed this is what I learned -- create a new levels layer and take the middle slider almost all the way to the right. Then with a dodge tool (about 60%) start painting the background (remember to unclick 'protect tones').

 When I've painted the whole background I clicked the levels layer to be not visible and then flatten the layers. An easy and quick way to make sure that the white isolated background is actually white and isolated.

 With tidying the face I'm also very 'natural' and don't want to go overboard and make the model look too plastic. I might clean up spots with patch tool or clone stamp. Erik showed me quick way to fix darker areas under the eyes - with clone stamp tool (set at about 60%) first click on a clear tidy area under the eyes and then swipe on the darker areas. I've done too much clicking when fixing these areas - just a few swipes and it already looks good. With these images I did nothing else for the skin (sometimes I might smooth a little bit).

... And I have a new blog on the way :). This one I started in Australia, on the Sunshine coast so will be nice to get a new nice blog :). I will keep you updated :).

These images are already selling at Shutterstock, visit my gallery here.