Pre-Wedding Vegas Strip Photography with Robert and Melody

Robert and Melody are natural models, and both of them were GORGEOUS! We had an absolute blast on our Las Vegas Strip Photography Tour just before their wedding ceremony. I couldn’t believe how relaxed they were, even considering they were getting married in just a couple hours!

We spent 2 hours visiting the famous Welcome “To Las Vegas” sign, then to New York New York, Bellagio (inside and out), and Paris.

When it was all said-and-done, I had over 200 pictures which edited down to around 160 nice ones, and I did “special processing” to about 30 of them.

I’ve had a lot of prospective clients and viewers of this blog ask HOW I do this processing. I’m not one to keep secrets so I’ll describe the processing as I post the photos… I won’t get too technical, don’t worry!

This processing included a color saturation effect, a bit of a dreamy blur, some very specific adjustment of light/dark in certain parts of the photo, and one of my client’s favorites: “glam blur”. The overall effect of the processing makes the photo very “colorful” and the glam blur gives the skin a nice natural smooth look (and reduces wrinkles which was NOT needed for this shoot):

Isn’t this ADORABLE? As I said, they were great at taking suggestions and this was one of the first photos I snapped at this location. Perfect! Processing is similar to the above photo.

For this photo, I wanted to portray a “dreamy” or “floating” feeling. I purposefully over-exposed the background (see how it’s too bright?) and then made the photo into two “layers”. On the top layer, I used a heavy blur effect, then I selectively “erased” the blurring effect on the important parts (their faces and bodies). I left some of their bodies blurry to increase the dream effect.

I know I’ve already done a shot SORT OF like the following (see Marius and Tamika’s blog post). After I took that shot I had been waiting to get another couple to the same location to make the shot a little better. This one is more posed and has a bit more processing.

It’s the “standard” process for Selective Color, basically I have a color layer and a b/w layer in Photoshop. The b/w layer is on top and I selectively “erase” portions of that layer to let the color show through from the bottom. On this shot, it’s only the “passion” words. I also did some blurring of the far background and a gradient blur of the edge of the post (so the front edge is less blurred than the rear).

I asked the couple to have some fun in front of the fountain and got about 10 nice shots. These three seemed to fit together very well for a “series” type photo. All I did was create a new file and paste the photos into it, then put a thin black line between each photo, and added a frame. The processing on the photos below was just some saturation and light/dark levels.

Remember, click on ANY photo in my blog to see a larger version. This one should probably be clicked!

After the shoot, Robert and Melody left for the airport (helipad) and were married in a helicopter above the city at sunset. How cool is that!?!?

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Tags: bellagio, las vegas photography, new york, paris, photo, photographer, Photography, robert, strip, vegas, vegas strip