I’m going to post an unedited shot below followed by the edited version and explain the post processing I used.

Here are the shots.

Ok..I didn’t do alot to the model, her skin was already great but I did fix one or two blemishes and smoothed it a very tiny bit..mainly to make the texture more consistent.   The main issue I had with the original was the radiator on the bottom right of the shot.  This led me to think about creating a pale, slightly blown out image which makes it easier to hide it.  So I applied some filters to make the image more blown out and then I increased the canvas size in photoshop and used content aware scale to extend the background out to the right.  I used the clone stamp tool to remove any lingering traces of the radiator, and also to balance the lightness and colour on the right and left of her legs.  I then removed the handles from the window again using clone stamp, as they were a distraction and screamed “look at me, I’m an ugly UPVC window “.

One other thing I did was to slightly lighten the irises in her eyes, to give them a little more life ( we did use a fill light from the doorway so there were catchlights in her eyes anyway ).

Dasha very kindly gave me permission to publish the unedited version of this shot by the way, its not something I would normally do without the permission of the model.

So I got asked to pop into London to shoot Vanessa recently.  What I loved about this shoot is that Vanessa had a whole bunch of ideas she wanted to try out and sent me lots of images before the shoot.  When you are planning shoots every week its a real blessing when the model comes up with a bunch of ideas themselves.  In terms of lighting, a lot of this was done with natural light.  So put the light behind the model, then expose for their face.  If your camera is using evaluative metering and not shooting on manual then you would need to tell the camera to overexpose by a couple of stops.  This is because if your backlighting a subject there will be a lot of light in the picture and the camera will underexpose the image, leaving you with a silhouette.  In the shot below that was deliberate of course…:)

And now for some more standard shots..mostly done with natural light or a tiny bit of fill light with a strobe bounced off the ceiling to raise the ambient light.

If you do this well, it can really add to some images.  Do it badly and it’s really obvious you faked it.  I’ll do a post on doing it in camera next, but for now, here is my take on adding it in photoshop.  Firstly, it really helps if there is an existing light source to enhance, it just makes it more believable.  Secondly, you really should put the lens flare on a duplicate layer so you can reduce its intensity.  Although the lens flare filter can be adjusted after you apply it anyway ( via the edit menu ) you get more control on a separate layer.   Lastly, the photoshop lens flare does put some over the top blobs of light  ( specular highlights ) along the path of the flare.  You can’t really mask these out as the lens flare increases the brightness of nearly the whole image.  The best thing to do is use the patch tool or healing brush tool to get rid of them.

So..to actually do this..

1.Create a duplicate layer

2.Go to Filter->Render->Lens Flare

3.Choose which type, I almost always use 105mm Prime, this appears to me the closest to the real lens flare I can create with my lights.

4.Position the dot ( helps if you have an existing light source to guide you here, like a window )

5.Choose the brightness then click ok.

Now you can play around with the opacity a little to make it look more realistic.  I often use this to simulate or enhance a light source, as well as for lens flare.  Here are a couple of examples where I’ve done this.  It is quite subtle, but that’s the point, if it wasn’t it would look too fake.

It’s quite important to know a few tricks for getting models to pose, especially working with new models.  Even when working with a pro, they can’t see what you see so you need to be able to spot the mistakes.  Here are the main things I look out for..

- Hands  are always a problem.  You should generally avoid having the palm or back of the hand flat to the camera, it will make the hands look larger than they are and you don’t want your model looking like a pro wrestler ( well, maybe you do, in which case, go wild with the flat hands ).

- For 3/4 and full length, having the body at and angle and the face looking more directly at the key light is a good way to make the model look slimmer.  Of course, if the model is already a stick insect, this may not be an issue, and for many glamour shots they often are standing pretty much straight on.   But it is a handy thing to be aware of.

- Whatever is closest to the camera will appear larger in the picture.  Common sense really, but you don’t want this to be the models backside.  Chest is preferable, or face.

- A space between the arms and torso will make the model appear slimmer.  Arms against the sides of the body will have the opposite effect.

- For profile shots you don’t want the nose protruding over the cheek line.

- If something bends, it should be bent ( very general rule of course ).  What you are looking to achieve with a female model is an S curve ( vaguely ).

- Often asking them to put their hair to one side, play with hair or some jewellery, or flick their hair round, is a good way to relax them.

- If they have a very wide eyed look ( rabbits in headlights ), ask them to squint just slightly, this can change the look of the shot completely and you will get less whites of the eyes.

- Centre the eyeballs!  Again a general rule that I often break, but the model should be looking roughly the same way her head is pointing, or you may get  a lot of white of the eye in the shot, which can look weird.

- In general keep all limbs in a shot, looks strange when one arm or a hand appears to be missing.

- for 3/4 length crop above the knee, not below it.

OK so today I’m going to document how I got 3 quite distinct looks from one set with the same model/outfit.  Jane came back for more after the dungeon experience and we’d talked about shooting her in an outfit she put together.  We started out on a white background and I dug out the cheap smoke machine I’d bought from Maplins some time ago and decided to try that.  For smoke shots to work you need to backlight them, so I came up with a fairly mad lighting setup, which was to stick 3 strobes behind the model just with bare bulbs, no lighting modifiers.  I then exposed for her face, knowing the background would be blown out, and fired up the smoke machine.  Here is the result, made 100% better by Jane being really good at natural, smily expressions.

So..that is one look.  Next I dug out the grey background and tried a more traditional approach.  There is a large stripbox to the right of the model, and a medium softbox on the floor as fill light in front of the model.  The model is some 4ft away from the background and pretty close to both lights, which gives me two positives, soft light, and great falloff of the light to add drama.  Here is the result.

Now for the third ( and in my opinion the best ) look, all I did was add in a strobe with a reflector on behind the models shoulder to give some lens flare.  I don’t use lens flare all the time, but it really is handy to add a bit of an edge to an image.  I also got Jane to do some hair tossing at this point to give a more wild look, and we got a result that I think is one of my best images to date.

So, with a bit of lighting creativity you can create some very different looks in the same space using the same outfit.  You do need a little bit of luck sometimes to create something really different though.  Also, hair tossing, it rules, and should be compulsory on every shoot where a model  has hair.  Sometimes a bit of movement in the hair makes all the difference to a shot.  Plus it makes models laugh and generally is a good ice breaker on a shoot.

We’ve all been there.  You take this incredible shot.  You think you absolutely nailed it, front cover of Vogue here I come..then you get to editing and realise the model has more flyaway hair than a womble who has just been tasered.  So how do you fix it?  Well, if the hair is on a clean background ( like a white, grey or black background), its a doddle.

1.Create a new layer

2.Use the clone stamp tool.  Clone out the hair as carefully as you can.  Don’t worry if you go over a few edges though as in the next step..

3.Create a layer mask over your top layer.

4.Paint over any bits where you got a bit keen with the clone stamp tool.

Job done.

But oh wait..there is flyaway hair over her arm you need to fix as well?  Bad luck, thats a bit harder.  There are different ways to do this depending on the models skin.  If its very smooth pale skin you can probably get away with clone stamping it as above.  If not, then you need to perform some skin grafting.

1.Use the lasso tool to select an area of skin similar to the one with the flyaway hair.

2.Copy and paste the selection..this will give you a new layer with a copy of your selection.

3. Move your new bit of skin ( or fabric, this works just as well with fabric ) until its over the flyway hair.

4.Create a layer mask on the new layer and invert it so that the new layer is completely hidden.

5.Using the brush tool and white, paint in the skin where the flyaway hair is.

You will need to mess around a bit to get this looking right and maybe play with the opacity of the new layer around the edges.  What you are doing is effectively skin grafting in photoshop, but it does work.

A couple of weeks ago I did a shoot with Olive at a flat in Fleet.  The idea behind this shoot was to help out the owner of said flat, Nick, who is just starting on model photography and wanted to see how I did things.  One of the interesting things to come out of this shoot is that there are a ton of small things experience teaches you that it’s quite difficult to pass on, and they are very subtle.   Nick was using exactly the same gear as me, down to the same lenses, but he didn’t get all the same shots, even after I adjusted his shooting position and angle a few times.  It was interesting to see this and I remember having exactly the same experience with my brother about a year and half ago.  He was a much more experienced photographer than me but we shot from the same angles using the same lighting set ups and the same model, yet his stuff just looked better.  It drove me nuts at the time, but I think what it demonstrates is, you can’t teach everything and experience ( the right kind of experience that is ), really does help massively.  It also dawned on me that if I want to teach this stuff for money at some point I need to get better at pointing out the subtle things I probably take for granted on a shoot.

Anyway, here are a few shots from the shoot.

OK, many times people take great shots that are let down by the background being uneven, wrinkly or just a little bit distracting.  There are many ways to deal with this but this technique, which I learned from Frank Doorhof in his Kelby Training video, seems to work pretty well for me.  This is using Photoshop CS5 or 6.

1.Create a new duplicate layer .

2.Select your subject using the quick select tool, on the new layer.  This does not have to be a perfect selection, but pretty good, just make sure you are not missing any parts of your model.Also, anything you do not want blurred should also be selected.

3.Feather and expand your selection by 5 pixels.

4.Cut your selection.

5.Use gaussian blur on your top layer ( where you just cut out your subject ), use enough to make your background even.  Then add 1-2% noise.

6.Got to edit->paste special->paste in place.

7.Merge your layers.

This is a quick and dirty technique, but very fast once you get the hang of it.  The amount of blur you need to apply will vary depending on your background.  Its better to get the background right in camera by controlling the light of course, but for various reasons this often doesn’t happen and in those cases this technique may help you.

Flame the hell out of some poor innocent on an internet forum. At least, that seems to be what a lot of people are doing these days.  There is an increasing trend for the Internet Warrior to step forth into a previously happy forum thread and say something horrible.

In the real world this person is probably a nice enough person, and they would never say something similar in person to someone else, but on the internet that cloak of anonymity gives them the power to unleash their inner bastard.  I saw a couple of threads on Purestorm and Purpleport ( both internet networking sites for models, make up artists and photographers ) this week that really highlighted this. Here is a link to the first one…( the site contains many not safe for work images, be warned )..

http://purpleport.com/group/the-rant-zone/13961/mr-rancid-is-back—/page/1/

Now I have met the person who started the while nasty comments thing in person, and he is a really nice guy, a good photographer and he helps run a local studio.  So this behaviour mystifies me.  He may believe he doesn’t need the Purpleport community anymore now that he’s shooting agency models, and he might be right..but then again..is it worth the risk to your reputation to do this?  These sorts of forum posts leave footprints in the internet sand that linger around for a long time..it could be that at some point this will come round and bite this guy on the backside.

There was a another thread on Purestorm which was a portfolio review..and often the Internet Warriors come out in force for these.  Its very easy really, you spot someone with a really poor portfolio, you know yours is better, so you wade in and put the boot in.

This thread contains nudity from the start, so be warned, and the site also is full of nudity.  That may encourage you or put you off following this link, but you have been warned!

http://www.purestorm.com/forum/readThread.aspx?id=196026

This one surprised me, as the people putting the boot in were people I respected prior to reading this thread.  Some of them are successful and talented photographers.  This just makes them look like nasty school kids and I really can’t understand why they would do this.  It’s quite easy to review someone’s portfolio without resorting to this kind of nastiness.  So don’t do it, it may come back to haunt you one day and the internet never forgets!

I went down to Brighton for 2 shoots last week.  The first was to shoot a set for the Suicide Girls for an alt model ( Sabien ).  That was a pretty cool shoot but because its for a pay site I can’t really share the images ( which I am still busy editing ).  I also did a shoot with Fiona York.  Fiona was having some very high end hair extensions put in ( I had no idea how much these things cost, but I think I’m past the point of needing them, unless I want to look like Michael Bolton, which I don’t ).  So the idea was to shoot some portraits and fashion stuff and pass a few images onto the MUA who did the extensions.  I’d forgotten how easy it is to work with Fiona, you can get through a whole load of sets really quickly as she just nails the shot time after time.

Most of the time the lighting was 2 strip lights and a beauty dish, or clamshell lighting with a couple of softboxes, so nothing too complicated.  It doesn’t have to be complicated to work well:)  Most of the time when going to a shoot I don’t even think about the lighting set up anymore ( unless it is a very challenging shot ), I think more about the image and then shuffle the lights around until I achieve the image.

And a few more…