Create a Natural Spotlight with Photo Veils {Photo Recipe}

My dear friend, who loves vintage and makes fantastic finds in flee markets, has moved to an older farming house to the province with her family. I photographed her beautiful home when visiting her for the very first time - a series of images I thought of giving to her as a special present - encouraging her to follow her dream of becoming an interior decorator. 

My aim with this picture was to highlight the turquoise creamer and to convey the feeling of being in a cozy landscape kitchen. I focused on the creamer, using my 18-55 lens with shutter speed 1/125 and aperture f/7.1 with center-weighted metering. I took the picture from a low angle, and placed the tray with the creamer in between the two vertical lines of the table, to strengthen the depth of field in the photo.

The image straight out of camera was compositionally fine, but I still wished that the creamer would stand out even more. I used two photo veils and a texture from Love That Shot, together with minor adjustments with brightness, in order to create a natural spotlight on the creamer. 

Photo recipe:

1. I added the Privet photo veil from the Botanical Collection in Adobe Photoshop, using blending mode soft light with 76 % opacity. I like the warm shades this veil adds to the image - deepening the colour of the table in a natural way. I used a soft round brush to remove the veil from the creamer and the tray, and also from the white wall behind the table.
2. I then chose the lasso tool in Photoshop and created a mask around the milk in the creamer, and increased slightly the brightness. To soften the edge of the layer mask, I sat the feather for the mask around 100 px.
3. The second photo veil, The Low Spotlight Bottom from the Illumination Collection, with blending mode vivid light 60 %, highlighted the creamer in a delicate way. I brushed the veil away from the white wall in the upper left corner of the image, using soft round brush.
4. I created a layer mask on the creamer and brightened the turquoise to a hardly noticeable lighter shade.
5. To deepen the soft, warm feeling in the wooden table and the chairs, I added the Venice texture from the Olde World Collection, using blend mode multiply 33 %. Once again, I brushed the texture away from the tray, creamer and the white wall.
6. Taking a last look at the photo, I decided to remove the tiny spots of milk next to the bigger milk spot on the creamer. 

Every now and then it is a pleasure to give an extra tweak to lifestyle photos - thereby creating the tiny difference, that will lift your photos from ordinary to something special!

Have you not tried photo veils yet, follow this link to Love That Shot-website, where you can download a FREE sample!

Let's keep on noticing and capturing the moments in our everyday life...

Until next time,

Nina

{PS. I am away from the blog - this is posted with the help of Bloggers pre-post planner}