Self Portraits

I had to send a mugshot type photo of myself to a magazine today and as I haven't posted on here since god knows when I thought I'd kill two birds with one stone, so to speak. I really dislike being on the other side of the camera and I particularly dislike it when I have to use a mirror, I could have set up a tripod and all that but thought it would be a fairly quick affair. So then out came the speed lights and pocket wizards and I got set in front of the mirror.

I have no idea why I decided to take pictures in the bathroom and it was particularly embarrassing when my sister dropped in to see me but I managed to get through it. It was a two light setup with hard light coming from behind me to provide the rim lighting (no I hadn't brushed my hair) and a light in front to 45 degrees to my left. The light in front had an umbrella on in one shot and a home made grid on the other providing two different types of lighting. A decent amount of light bounced from the rear light on the mirror lighting up the room behind me so I just sorted it out with the local adjustment tool in LR2 (now much better after 2.1 patch). I put it in mono as I find it more flattering. The exif was ISO100, 70mm, 1/200 at 5.6.

Bolton Abbey Shoot

I was doing a shoot at Bolton abbey with some friends but they were busy at a service so I just got some shots of my girlfriend/assistant.

Conditions were very overcast which I don't generally like as the light is very flat and it's difficult to create any depth but on the otherhand it is very soft with no sharp shadows or 'panda eyes' you can get in harsh afternoon light. I got 5 shots I was happy with and thought I would put a couple up, they were taken around ISO200, 1/500, f/4 at about 70mm, processed first in lightroom then in photoshop, 4 out of the 5 were black and white.

Maternity Photography

Another ultra quick post because I need to go to bed, I've just been processing this one as it was literally the first one I looked at from a shoot this evening and I needed something to do while all the other photos were being imported. This was of my good friends who don't mind being photography guinea pigs! This isn't how I typically process a maternity shot, but I quite liked the effect, I imaging the rest will be in mono, I have another 293 of these to do! Anyway happy easter!

Goldfinger Girl

I'm putting this one up as I have a nude assignment coming up so I had to brush up on my techniques. The reluctant model needed a little persuading to let me put this photo up but it's tastefully done and thought it would be good for illustrating the technique, she agreed. This was taken on full manual mode at ISO100 1/200 sec f/8 at 48mm.

This was shot in a studio with a light either side of her but you can use any photo with a bit of variation in the shadows. As with most fine art nudes the photo was taken in colour but converted to black and white during processing. The effect used to get the shiny metallic look on the skin is called the Sabatier effect. Good old wiki has an entry about it here. As with a lot of old school techniques this can be replicated digitally but also is easy to over cook and time should be taken to get the effect just right.
Once you have your desaturated (B&W) photo add a curves adjustment layer in photoshop. A box will appear with a line running from the bottom left to top right. To the left of this there is a pencil, click this to draw your own curve, then starting at the top left of the box draw a smooth W shape. This will undoubtedly give you a very odd looking photo, if you then click on the points adjuster (icon next to the pencil on the left) you can then move the curve at each point, I remove a few points here by dragging them out of the window, you only need 5 or 6. Then it is a case of adjusting them until you get the desired effect. I'll repeat this can be very hit and miss but thats the beauty of digitally editing.

Retouching Portraits

I haven't added many portrait examples so here's one I was processing last night. The thing that struck me about this shot was the size of the girl's eyes and how the catch lights really add a sense of depth to them. I was also practising some air brushing techniques to make the skin really flawless, but still maintaining the dimple. There are thousands or retouching techniques out there but I'll give a quick run through of what I did.
Firstly I removed any obvious spots and marks, very quick using either the spot healer in photoshop or the spot remove tool in lightroom. The next part takes the longest, I use the healing brush, always on a new layer (ctrl J to duplicate the original layer) and sample from really clear bits of skin and repeatedly go over any blotchy parts. I then duplicate this layer and do some dodging in the eyes, on the whites and the irides (plural for iris apparently, I never knew that). Anyway after brightening the eyes a touch I then ran a surface blur filter (under filter, blur) with about 15 for radius and pixels, the result of this will look very odd so you must then reduce the opacity of that blurred layer to get back the detail in from the layer below. To selectivity sharpen areas ie the eyes and the lips just add a layer mask and paint in black (or grey) over the parts you don't need smoothing out. That's pretty much it for retouching, the key is usually less is more, you can always measure your progress by alt clicking on the eye next to the background layer this will reveal your original photo only.