Many photographers hate the post-production aspect in photography, which they find tedious, time-consuming and more generally, not a lot of fun. Also, many people believe that retouching a photo is cheating.

Me, on the contrary, I love post-production! Perhaps even more than actually taking the photo! And I do not believe it is cheating as many of the things we do in post-production today were also doable in the past with film photography. Nevertheless, we have way more control and possibilities today, so why not make the most of it?

As you have probably understood, I give post-processing crucial importance, as this is where my images come to life.

I often conceive the photo in my head, first. I sometimes even draw it. It helps me visualise the one or more photos I need to take so as to achieve THE final photo I had in mind in the first place.

Sometimes, it is possible to get the desired result in one photo. Often times, I blend two or more photos in order to get one photograph, perfectly exposed everywhere, or simply to add city lights into a beautiful sunset photo.

For this shot, you can see that I used a beautiful sunset photo as a base. I then added the fireworks, set the buildings’ vertical lines straight, adjusted the colours and global and local contrast. That did the trick!

Here, the base is a very shallow depth of field photo, and the blending of many photographs for each and every part of the bottle: the cap, the inside, the label, the water droplets, and the nice highlight on the right, showing the shape of the bottle.

I must admit not having had to do a lot in post-processing on this image as the place was already spectacular. You may note, though, the removal of the huge printer under the stairs and of some elements in the top part of the image, as well as the adjustment of all the vertical lines.

Meticulousness is key on this kind of photograph, and you can see here that I have cleaned up the product in post-production, notably the base of the dough and the sides. I also took a few other shots with the same lighting for the spoon and finally added some text to make it all look like an ad.

I took this shot in less than 5 minutes during an event in this hotel, so it is far from being perfect. However, it still represents quite well my process of straightening the vertical lines, the removal of distracting elements (the person on the left, lights and hatch on the ceiling, among others), constrast and highlight correction, notably under the desk on the left side of the image.

Thi is a typical example of the addition of city lights into a beautiful sunset photo. You can note the removal of the whole temporary construction building on the center-right part, in front of the building. I have to admit that this removal was not simple at all to achieve.

On this photo, you can see a major perspective adjustment, the addition of the city lights in the apartments, as well as contrast and colour adjustments.

This photo did ask me a lot in post-production as I did not have a lot of time there to shoot. We can particularly see that I set the vertical and horizontal lines straight, blended several photos to control the highlights and finally added city lights through the windows.

The most dramatic change here is obviously the perspective correction so that all the lines of this landmark are perfectly vertical and horizontal. I then replaced the sky by another one I took a little bit later that day to get better sunset colours. Finally, you can note the removal of the metal slab and the addition of the flowers in the bottom-right corner.

Once more, this is a great example of multiple photos blended into one to get the beautiful sunset as well as the city lights well exposed. I also added a long exposure shot to get the light trails of the cars. I think it adds a certain dynamism to the photo.