This is Day 7 and the final day of the challenge. Aside from showcasing these portraits I captured during Camerahaus Photo Festival, I also present to you some of my favorite Lightroom presets I use which I also used in this portrait challenge series. But first, let’s have an overview what presets are.

What are Lightroom Presets?

Lightroom is a mobile editing app just like Snapseed, VSCO and Instagram. Lightroom presets are actually filters but way more advance because you can adjust the settings, hue, tone curve and other things. You can actually make your own Presets. People who are good in it can share or even sell it.

I’ve been addicted with Lightroom editing recently since you can edit a lot of pictures in batches. While I do manually edits, I truly love to use presets that I got online. In this blog post I am going to share my favorites especially in portraits.

2. Where did I get this Lightroom presets?

I got this all from a Facebook community Lightroom Classroom PH . If you want to have this presets, you have to be a member of this Facebook group. Talented creators are frequently having giveaways there. They are pretty generous.

So that’s it. Off we go. Some of my favorite presets.

1.Creamy Beach

Creator : Klein Conejos a.k.a NoobGFX. The creator has his own fb page: NoobGFX.

I consider this as my most favorite preset. I actually raped it haha! And if you have been following my blog for a while, you will notice that I use it for most of my blog posts. I just love how it brings out the colors of the picture. It also gives skin a pinkish glow. Although sometimes, it is way too much pink. But for that, I just tweak saturation a little..

Before Vs After-Edit

With Preset

Other samples

See my other blog posts using this preset: Drown in Flowers in Northern Blossom Atoc, Benguet

2. Peach Perfect

Creator: Steph Villanueva

I just discovered this recently and it became my instant favorite because it looks subtle and natural. It does not change the skin tone too much. It is also extremely good in underexposed photos.

Before Vs After-Edit

Other samples

See my other blog posts using this preset: Day 1 of Portrait Challenge

3. Creamy Fade Light

Creator: Klein Conejos aka. NoobGFX.

Yes another NoobGFX preset! Creamy Beach and this one is actually part of his creamy presets. It looks like Creamy Beach but this one has slight fade effect. It also more brighter.

Before Vs After-Edit

See other blog post that use this preset: Dessert Museum Adventure

4. Orensie

Creator: JAO

It makes the photo a little bit antique. It’s just harsh on the skin sometimes. It makes the skin looks copper but it looks good if a human subject is far away. This would be my least favorite in this batch if portrait is the issue. But this looks really good in landscapes.

Before Vs After-Edit

5. Lightroom Preset Groove

Creator: Sheantel Claveria

This is my most recent discovery. I love the mood it gives to the photo and it is skin-friendly too. This is the next preset I’ll abuse.

Before Vs After-Edit

Other samples:

That’s all folks. My 7-Day Portrait Challenge is over. I actually haven’t published my Day 6 here in my blog but it’s already in my facebook page: Gurezu Blog.

How about you?! What’s your favorite Lightroom Preset here in this post? Feel free also to suggest any other Lightroom presets that are great in portraiture photography in the comments below. I would love to try them out.

I am officially blogging about my photography journey. Let me vent out some feelings a little bit. I’m actually feeling frustrated and anxious right now. Apart from the feeling that I feel like I’m starting again in blogging world, I haven’t reach a level of confidence that I wanted when it comes to photography. I overthink and at the end, I don’t start and finish anything. I argue myself these past few days. What matters is I love to write and take pictures right? After a lot of self-negotiation, I’m finally throwing any emotional baggage at the moment and decided to blog about our first photoshoot of the year . #WriteAndShoot2018, here we go.

Last year I transferred to another company and eventually joined their photography club. Almost every week, we organize a photoshoot to hone our skills. We do our shoots inside the office since our models are also from the company and we are just borrowing their time. For this year, we are starting our photoshoot series with the theme “BLACK” inspired by the Korean series with the same name. Actually our model proposed this concept herself. And that’s good because I won’t have to overthink on the concept.

Before photoshoot, we prepare what we call a “mood board”. Actually it’s just a collection of pictures from the internet which fits the mood of our theme. It serves as

1. inspiration for the photographers

2 idea for the models to know what kind of expression they would exude for the photoshoots.

Imitation is an effective learning style. So at first we look at these photos to learn how those effects were made. Apart from that, we play a sort of playlist in a background for added atmosphere related to our theme. It also helps our models feel homey and at ease. For this photoshoot, we just played the theme song of the korean series BLACK. To tell you the truth, we got this photoshoot workflow from the free seminars we attended in Camerahaus. Actual photoshoots were really like this. Let’s copy from the experts haha!

(Photo credits: Dan Olarte)

We were five in this session. Or beautiful model, Hasz. Our mentor which is also my manager, Sir Ge. EJ, Dan and yours truly as photography proteges, char!

(Photo credits: Dan Olarte)

Behind the Scenes Photos featuring my behind hehe. (Photo credits: Dan Olarte)

For some reason, this photo looks funny to me. I just can’t look at it without silently laughing bwahahahahahahahaha! (Photo credits: Dan Olarte)

So here are my output for this session. A mix of edited and unedited pics. And some technical notes I could remember.

Would You Trust my Eyes?

Just a short note. My godox flash was set in manual master mode channel 8. It served as a trigger for the honeycomb flash located beside the model.

WARM MEMORIES

Achieving Warm Tone. Just a short note, I set my camera in high Kelvin values for this but for some reason it didn’t work. My mentor Sig Ge set the RGB adding red levels.

“Goodbye Darkness”

There were sorrow and regrets beside you.
But there’s also rest
And a lot of time to reflect
Only with you I can see the light
And I’m seeing it bright now
Before I say my farewell
You must know there’s a joy within you too
Goodbye darkness

And guess what, EJ which is actually a videographer suprised us with a BTS video of our shoot. I was really amazed with his editing skills.

BTS | Hasmine | All about BLACK from straightforwardvideo on Vimeo.

That wraps our first photoshoot session for this year. This also marks day 1 of my 30 days blogging challenge. Yes, I’ll be posting everyday for 30 days! I was inspired by another wordpress blogger boredsensei whom I also met in recent blogger meet-up. She is an English teacher in Japan. As of now, she’s already in her Day 12 already. I love how she chronicles her daily life in Japan because it is very informative. It has been my dream to go to Japan because I was into anime’ before. I even studied basic Japanese. Reading her blog makes me feel I’m getting myself ready for my own visit soon. LAW OF ATTRACTION PLEASE!!!!

Ending my blog with my photos of the session taken by my co-photographers.

Title: When can I go shopping without me looking in the price tags?
Photo credit: Dan Olarte

Photos by: G2Photography

Credits:

Model: Hasmine Ajihil, ig: hma_016

Photographers

Mentor: Gerard Dangca of G2Photography
Mary Grace Sabado of Gurezu Blog
Dan Olarte
EJ Delinquina of straightforwardvideo

Blogging Music: Trust my Eyes (Black Opening song) and Warriors by Imagine Dragons.

Time and Location: 7:14pm , Coreon Gate Cafe’

Weather: Rainy and cold. In a company of strangers mostly students from La Salle.

Tag: photographyph

Day 7 of Portrait Challenge And My Favorite Lightroom Presets For Portraits

1.Creamy Beach

Our Mini-Photoshoot in the Office with the Theme “Black”

Would You Trust my Eyes?

Just a short note. My godox flash was set in manual master mode channel 8. It served as a trigger for the honeycomb flash located beside the model.

WARM MEMORIES

Achieving Warm Tone. Just a short note, I set my camera in high Kelvin values for this but for some reason it didn’t work. My mentor Sig Ge set the RGB adding red levels.

“Goodbye Darkness”

Title: When can I go shopping without me looking in the price tags?
Photo credit: Dan Olarte

1.Creamy Beach

Would You Trust my Eyes?

Just a short note. My godox flash was set in manual master mode channel 8. It served as a trigger for the honeycomb flash located beside the model.

WARM MEMORIES

Achieving Warm Tone. Just a short note, I set my camera in high Kelvin values for this but for some reason it didn’t work. My mentor Sig Ge set the RGB adding red levels.

“Goodbye Darkness”

Title: When can I go shopping without me looking in the price tags?Photo credit: Dan Olarte

Title: When can I go shopping without me looking in the price tags?
Photo credit: Dan Olarte