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