I try to do all of my photo editing at night in a dimly lit room.  It may sound funny, but this is my preferred environment, not just for working, but for seeing my images as well.  If there is a correct way to see my photos, it’s as large as possible in as dark a room as possible.  The amount of times that I’ve edited a photo to perfection one night, only to find it so dark that it is virtually unviewable during the light of day is shockingly high.  (This is part of photography that you never think about).  But I remain firm; editing is done at night.

I mention this here in this photo of Nick and Lisa Lambros because this is a type of photo that could be significantly impacted by this day/night editing/viewing.

One thing that I absolutely love is dusk.  When the light begins to play tricks on your eyes and things begin appearing in the shadows.  You see shapes and forms, but can’t tell what they are because it’s getting dark.  It’s light enough to see the shadows, dark enough not to know what you’re looking at.  This photo was one that I took trying to capture that.  As an aside, this type of hazing darkness is horrifically hard to capture in lens.  It’s almost always in post that I get it… on the rare occasions when I do get it.  This was was I was trying to create in this shot.

Nick and Lisa are both very visible, but everything around them requires (hopefully) more scrutiny.  The place where I see this the most is the sky.  At first glance, the sky and roof are both dark–almost black–and blend together.  However, after your eyes get used to the light of this image, the chimney starts to separate from the sky and the trees.  It’s really an interesting effect.

So Nick is very brightly lit.  Lisa is brightly lit, but less so than Nick… and everything else is (hopefully) in the shadows.

Because I’m asked a fair amount, the array of colors to the right of the image is a giant, glass brick window in the Lambros garage (where they keep their tools).