nickwheeleroz's photostream  

One of my Flickr friends asked about the processing on the last Karli portrait in my stream. I don't normally mention too much about processing in the write ups because to be honest, Photoshop is not really one of my strong points. I know enough to muddle by, but anything trickier than a bit of tidying up tends to defeat me. I make no claim that the step by step process I have included in the comments here is the right way to do this, the simplest way or even the best way. It is just one way that works for me. Having said that, I have just taken delivery of Scott Kelby's new book Professional Portrait Retouching Techniques for Photographers using Photoshop (snappy title, no SEO going off there), and after a quick skim through, I am hoping to make some definite improvements in my retouching skills.

At the end of the last dress shoot we did, Tim, our hair and makeup guy asked if we could have a go at reproducing the look from a magazine cover he had. It was a low key head on head shot with very desaturated colours and the model wrapped in a big bow of fabric.

We hunted out a suitable length of purple material and made it into a bow. All the models volunteered to have a go and this is the result from Karli.

The main light is a single AB1600 with a large octobox to the right of Karli's head, very close in and on its lowest power setting. Behind Karli's head is a SB-28 on 1/4 power with a purpley blue gel to light the black seamless background paper.

In the end, I did not desaturate the colours as much as they had been on the magazine cover, but I was still happy with the look of the final shot.

Setup shot here: Karli Setup

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The final pictures have notes on how this shot was put together.

Final pictures here: Karli

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Kate and Belinda asked me if I could do another Birthday shoot for D'arcy now he is two. Always happy to have an excuse to break out the lights I of course agreed. He has changed a lot since I did his naming day shoot but he was happy to sit and pose for a few shots, helped along with a couple of toy cars and the odd tasty treat.

We had him sitting on a cushion on a trestle table (to lift him up to the lights) and I went with a large gridded octobox as the main light. I also had a couple of gridded strip lights slightly behind him and to each side. We shuffled these round a bit, depending on the picture.

Kate did tell me about an interesting incident with one of the previous pictures I had taken of D'arcy. She had printed it out and had it in a frame on her desk at work. She had been in the process of moving offices and realised she had forgotten to take the picture with her. She went back to get it but found that the new occupant of the desk had removed the picture from the frame and replaced it with one of her own. When Kate asked where her picture had gone, the lady told her she had thrown it in the bin as she thought it was just the insert you get when you buy the frame. I guess the take away of this story is that you know you have taken more than a snap when someone throws it away because it is too good! :)

Setup shot here: D'arcy Setup

Follow me on Twitter: nickwheeleroz

Kate and Belinda asked me if I could do another Birthday shoot for D'arcy now he is two. Always happy to have an excuse to break out the lights I of course agreed. He has changed a lot since I did his naming day shoot but he was happy to sit and pose for a few shots, helped along with a couple of toy cars and the odd tasty treat.

We had him sitting on a cushion on a trestle table (to lift him up to the lights) and I went with a large gridded octobox as the main light. I also had a couple of gridded strip lights slightly behind him and to each side. We shuffled these round a bit, depending on the picture.

Kate did tell me about an interesting incident with one of the previous pictures I had taken of D'arcy. She had printed it out and had it in a frame on her desk at work. She had been in the process of moving offices and realised she had forgotten to take the picture with her. She went back to get it but found that the new occupant of the desk had removed the picture from the frame and replaced it with one of her own. When Kate asked where her picture had gone, the lady told her she had thrown it in the bin as she thought it was just the insert you get when you buy the frame. I guess the take away of this story is that you know you have taken more than a snap when someone throws it away because it is too good! :)

Setup shot here: D'arcy Setup

Follow me on Twitter: nickwheeleroz