Aspire Photography Training | Crave Photography

On Monday I headed up to Cumbria to one of my favourite places for photography (and life!) inspiration; Aspire Photography Training. Aside from the delicious food and beautiful location, this is a place I can guarantee to come away from feeling inspired, motivated, empowered, encouraged and excited, and I knew this particular course would be extra-special. Andrea Tate from Crave Photography had flown all the way from the USA to train us in her uniquely beautiful, gasp-inducing post-processing style, and I was very, very excited to be there! I am a self-confessed photoshop addict. I can’t help myself. I just love taking an image from good to wow, bringing it alive and making it sing. And yes, this is time-consuming, and it does mean my clients have to wait a little longer for their images. But I think it’s worth it, and I know they do too when they see their images. I’m not talking about gimmicky tricks, head-swaps and the like, just beautiful enhancements that make the colours rich, skin-tones creamy and the photograph come alive. The Americans seem to be especially good at this, and Crave Photography in particular has become famous for it. Andrea was such a generous and honest trainer, taking us through exactly what she does to an image, step-by step, explaining the processes clearly and giving tips and shortcuts. Although I don’t think this will speed up my editing as I now want to do even more in photoshop (oh dear!), my knowledge of photoshop has deepened, my skills are refined, and I learnt some amazing things that I know will make my images look even better. I couldn’t wait to try out all the new things I learned, and Andee’s workflow process, so I spent a little time this morning working on this image of my little girl Sophie, playing in the daffodils, that I took on our Mother’s Day trip to Cliveden on Sunday. I’m sure I still have a little way to go before I’m up to Andrea’s standards, but I’m quite pleased so far. Here are the before and after images:

Do check out Andrea’s beautiful work, her online one-to-one mentoring, and Aspire Photography Training‘s array of fabulous courses!