Trying to break out of a post-processing rut

Pupator

When 90% of the pictures you take are of your own kids, it's easy to get into a rut in PP. I pretty much know what to do to correctly process the pictures for accuracy (having a grey card in the shot helps ). Tonight I was looking through the most recent galleries of the kids and I was amazed how boring the processing is at times.

My new goal is for each location, to process a few pictures "normally" and a few pictures more creatively. Since I'm new to the creative part, I'm submitting the following attempts for critique and feedback. I'm less interested in feedback on composition, etc (these were just the most recent shots I had access to in LR) and more interested in processing.

My wife and our youngest (Kate). Originally processed in color, now reprocessed with a sepia tone.


Our oldest (Nathan), processed in black and white:


Nathan again, this time processed in a kind of surreal color intensity:

dogwood

Pupator wrote: »

When 90% of the pictures you take are of your own kids, it's easy to get into a rut in PP.

Not sure I'm following your logic. Are you saying you want a different look than how the photos are turning out as shot? Easy cure for that -- change your lens, change your f-stop, change your lighting, angle, focal length, etc. But I think I'm missing something...

Pupator

Im in a post-processing rut. I want to try some more creative ways of post-processing rather than just straight-forward (accurate) color. I don't know how else to say it. It's not related to lens, f-stop, etc.

lanaer

Perhaps it may be worth taking just one shot, and processing it 5 or more different ways. Go crazy. Vignettes, strong contrast, odd curves adjustments... at least some of the results should look weird, or even bad. The shots you have here still look somewhat ordinary.

That said, I like sepia, but that shot could probably use more contrast. Your black & white shot looks good, though I wonder what it would look like if you cropped out the right side of the frame and added a significant vignette (I've been liking vignettes lately, probably too much).

The last shot does look more vibrant and saturated than is normal, but not so much that I'd call it "surreal". I don't have any particular ideas about what I'd change about it, though, it's a good shot.