Saturday evening my husband and four daughters attended our homeschool group Father/Daughter Dance, one of the highlights of a father’s existence. The fun for the mother (before she enjoys a quiet night at home or a mother/son date) is photographing them as they leave.

We had a lot of rain last week and honestly, I was just happy that it wasn’t too cold or wet when we took these pictures. Cloudy weather can enhance a photo by softening the intensity of the sun or making an interesting skyline, but in this case it looks dismal.

I decided to warm up these shots with some artificial sunshine!

The Edits

1. Use the Make It Better – Auto Tone preset, a free download on Sean McGrath Free and Premium Lightroom Presets page. This boosts color saturation and contrast.
2. Apply the Sunflare Left RAW preset for Lightroom from Pretty Presets (download it for free at Lightroom Killer Tips).
3. Apply a light vignette (darken the edges).

The warmth adds a lot, doesn’t it? The Sunflare Left preset is designed to be used on images shot in RAW and uses a series of graduated filters, which you can drag and shift if you want the flare effect to come from a slightly different angle.

With my youngest daughter I chose black and white: she has the remains of a red Kool-aid mustache (I rubbed off a lot of it with a baby wipe, but it’s still there) and light blue/green eyeshadow that her sister applied (I’m not fond of make-up on 7 year olds), so I thought eliminating color was a good idea here.

Like before and after shots? Find links to my 31 Days of Before & After Shots series here. Sign up here to receive new posts in your inbox (click the link in the confirmation email from FeedBurner to complete your subscription).