Awhile back I had a request from a follower (yes more than my mother reads my blog apparently) to do a post about photo editing because she noticed that even my none professional photos on my feed and stories had the same vibe.

I am of course flattered, but really the credit goes to my photographer Lauren Louise (I think I've mentioned her a few times...). When I was rebranding and decided on the look I wanted it was a no brainer that Lauren’s unique palette was what I wanted, but I knew she wasn’t going to be able to take every photo for me so I asked her to take some and then help me come up with an editing process that would help with the rest.

I met Lauren at a photography workshop that she was teaching with District Bliss DIY. One of the things that stuck most and that I still use almost hourly is VSCO. VSCO is an incredible photo editing app. The reason being that the options for editing are way beyond those of other apps and the filter options are insane. VSCo has hundreds of preset filters and beyond that more options of lighting, composition, etc. Literally hundreds. The other thing Lauren taught me the day we met was the rule of 3rds ... but maybe that’s for a different post.

For my photos, Lauren showed me the M5 filter on VSCO. This filter is a warmer, more golden brown filter. This means that on the color spectrum it leans toward orange not blue. But it doesn't stop at just slapping a filter on it. The next step for me is that is still want the whites a bit whiter and not too cream so I then adjust the exposure and up the contrast slightly to make the whites pop a bit more. And lastly, if the lighting in the photo is bad and those whites are still too brown I use the temperature and turn it down toward the blues a touch. PRO TIP: for all the photographers out there .... when I caught up with Lauren about this post I asked her if she does anything special with her professional photos and she said all she would say is that she uses Lightroom LXC4 (the rest you’ll have to learn on your own to get that LLP quality haha)!

In summary: