Flickr: shutterviewphotography

Website: www.shutterviewphotography.com

My wife and I run a photography business. I am a musician, turned game programmer, turned graphics artist, now finally turned photographer. We can do pretty much everything you'd ever need in the creative/development industry.

My interests are in Fashion/Commercial photography, whether it's Vogue, Escquire, Victoria Secret or JCPenney's.
My wife shoots babies, kids, seniors, maternity, families, bridals, weddings, actors and model head shots.

We are very classy/professional to work with. My wife and I built a studio in our home and also love to do on location shoots that are unique. If you need photoshop work done, we can do that as well.

Feel free to bring a friend on any shoot, and we encourage it because we always appreciate someone to hold a reflector if needed. Also, if you aren't interesting to chat with, maybe your friend is ;)

WE like to go over the shoot over the phone so we can make sure we are on the same page.

We are always looking for more Wardrobe, Makeup and Hair Stylists to work with and build our team/connections. If you are a model and are interested in doing a collaboration, know that we only select attractive models to compliment our portfolios. We are accepting VERY little TF* shoots since we already have quite an enormous portfolio.

Visit our current portfolio reel:
www.flickr.com/photos/shutterviewphotography/sets/7215761...

Catch me on the largest model site:
www.modelmayhem.com/1113699

*********** MY LIGHTING SETUP ***********

For those who are wondering what our studio lighting consists of, here is a behind the scenes shot:

www.flickr.com/photos/shutterviewphotography/3771871409/s...

I have 2 AlienBee (AB800) lights for my key (set half way) and fill (set all the way down or around a quarter), and 3 150 w/s lights I got off Ebay. The key light camera left, has a beauty dish, a such and a grid on it. The fill light camera right, has a 47" octabox, with two 52" strip soft boxes for the back side lights, egg crated/gridded, and a bard door and grid for the background light that gives the halo of light behind the subject, each one from the lowest to a quarter of light usually.

*********** HOW I EDIT ***************

I get questions all the time on how I edit my pictures, because let's face it.. they look great :) j/k

Below is my workflow in Photoshop CS4 to get the results I get. I spend anywhere from 45 minutes to 3 hours, depending on how much fixes I need to do, but assuming there isn't too many blemishes and stuff to FIX, then I can do a photo in 1 to 1.5 hours. I should point out I always shoot in RAW. You can fix the exposure, which can SAVE your photos. I like my temperature cool, not all orange and sunny looking, if I am shooting more fashion stuff especially. Also, I take down the orange saturation by 20, and up the orange luminance by 5'ish in the RAW editor. Someone once told me less orange skin will make the images last longer through time, and I agree.

PLUGINS/ACTIONS
I uses the following:

Topaz Adjust - This makes it so you don't need to dodge and burn your photograph, but gives a decent effect that can take hours manually. It isn't going to probably as perfect, but it is amazing. It also has noise reduction that can be a life safer for low light situations, or dark areas and shadows that have a lot of noise. There is a checkbox to click that takes longer, but is more precise.. and is recommended when denoising skin areas. it also does HDR effects without needed to take multiple exposures, and gives great detail to the background in outdoor shots, especially rocks and such with detail. Be careful with using this, some people over do the HDR/Detail look and it looks really bad in my humble opinion.

Get a 30 day trial here:
www.topazlabs.com/adjust/

Mama's Powders (Original) - This action is what gives me the smooth skin. It acts as a mask that I paint on, at around 30% and apply where needed. You never do the eyes or lips, and places that need detail because it SMOOTHS them ;)

The best $40 you will spend:
www.photoshopmama.net/legalallpowders.html?reload

So here is the steps I take:

1) First create a new layer to save the original.

2) Patch Tool and Clone Stamp for blemishes and crows feet.

3) Unsharp Mask between 1 to 3, depending on how blurry the shot is. I will then mask this and remove the effects on the skin areas so that blemishes don't show clearer and sharper.

4) Mama's Powder Action Set (Original) for smooth yet still detailed skin. I run the action and apply with 30% brush on just the skin areas, not over eyes or mouth our eyebrows.

5) Topaz Adjust for noise reduction if necessary (40 to 60)

6) If I feel topaz isn't going to make the image too grainy, then Clarify (detail: 1.25 ish) and sometimes more noise reduction to get rid of some grainy detail, about 40 to 60). I sometimes do this on the layer below the powder layer so that I smooth out noisy detail areas on the skin from the Adjust->Clarity filter. I then mask out any areas that are too detailed like background sometimes and clothes that are too much affected.

7) Dodge the eye whites to make them prettier and brighter, sometimes using Color Range option to select only the white and do a curves layer to brighten them. Or mask a curves layer to brighten the whole socket if there is shadows. Maybe clean up some red veins in the eyes, but not TOO much perfection, because it looks fake.

That is 90% of the editing that makes a difference, the other 10% is small details that pro's will critique you for leaving out, but most people (non photographers) won't tell the difference or notice them, but sure make the difference from Joe and Pro.

These little details are:

8) Liquify for stray hair chucks and Patch Tool for loose hair, or Use Median (30) to mask over loose hair if you have a seamless or blurry/bokeh'ed background.

9) Diffuse Glow (2, 2, 19) for highlights on the ski, but only on the skin areas, so I mask it.

10) High Pass (1 to 2 ish), then mask just on details parts like eyes, eyebrows, lips, jewelry.. and parts of skin that need more detail. I make a new layer and set the layer style to overlay, then Filter->Other->High Pass so I can see the result in the High Pass editor.

11) Lens Correction Vignetting for VERY VERY subtle darker corners to emphasize the background light or middle of the picture. VERY subtle. I see photographers use TONS of vignetting and it looks so amateur--very 70's,80's,90's look too.

And that is mostly it. I might sculpt some fat down with Liquify, especially on the hips if they look too thick.. but there is any easy way to get around this.. don't shoot thick people ;)

I am trying to follow the "Less is more" mantra as of recently. So my editing gets more subtle as time goes on, and looks MUCH better in my opinion. I realized this after get lots of comments about how over photoshopped my pictures look, from friends and family. And they were RIGHT.

Ask me if you need any more details, and I love to help.