Hi everyone-

I decided to step away from the Vegas images today after working on some new processing of older images in Photoshop over the last few days.

Today's images are of Jack. They were shot in Savannah Georgia on a hotel balcony. The original image was posted some time ago but after revisiting them in photoshop I thought we'd take another look at it.

Some background on how the image was shot... It was a bright sunny day in Savannah and we were on a balcony that was in full shade but it was open. so basically the building was to the viewers left and the sun was overhead of that. The viewers right side was the open balcony. So while it was bright and sunny we were in an open shade. Here is a SOOC shot to show the ambient light in the area where we were shooting:



Jack was sitting on a chair on the balcony. To the viewers left was a hotel room window and the curtains were closed in it.

The image was shot hand held using a Nikon D300 at ISO 200, 1/250 sec at f/22. The lens was a Nikon 80-400vr at 160mm. The flash unit was an Alien Bees head with a silver reflector on it. I can't completely remember the set up but it was a few feet away at a bit of a reduced power. I'm sorry I don't remember exactly what it was.

So that's the set up. Here is the SOOC image:



As you can see that is somewhat flat and not to exciting. So Since I have been at home pretty much under the weather I decided to see what I could do with the image. I'll give you a brief explanation of what went on here but it's pretty basic because I am really bad at writing down everything that I did. I promise I'll get better with that and come up with a good way to pass that info along.

So that being said, I first off made some global adjustments and set the white and black points.
Then I smoothed the skin a bit with a surface blur.
Then I created masks for the highlights and shadows. Here I did a ton of work.
Then a few more curves adjustments.
After that it was all pretty much experimental. Blending modes, saturation, masks, this is where I am bad at keeping track.
Here is the final image in a color version:


Of course I wanted to see what it looked like in black and white:



And then in a selenium toned version:



I am not sure which I like the best. But I think they all work pretty good in bringing out the character of Jack's face.

I'd love to hear what you think. Which is your favorite? And does anyone have any questions, or thoughts on how to improve anything? It's all a learn as you go process so I'd love to hear your comments.

Have a great day!

Hi everyone-

Today's image was shot back in September while in Savannah. It was a bit more difficult of a shot to pull off as we were coordinating Abby and three assistants all moving down a sidewalk.

Abby was walking and when she hit her mark was to turn around as if someone had actually called out her name. The three assistants were waking a long side in the grass. One had an SB800, one a SunBounce reflector to which the flash was aimed, and one a large scrim to hold back the real sun a bit.

It was a fun shot to create and pull off and we had a fun time doing so.

Have a great day!