Wednesday, April 22, 2009

Making Friends Look More Like They'd Like

Some friends were out shooting last night and one took time out to sit for a single shot. It was just about dusk, so light was low. We were on the main thoroughfare through town, playing at a little hardscape park. There's a few benches, some apple tress in blossom, lights that look like they would have had been gas lit back in the 1800's. The lighting comes from a Nikon SB 600 shooting into a 30" x 40" softbox with a rig for the speedlite. Nikon's CLS was used to fire the speedlite. A gold reflector is camera left to fill in the shadow side of the face.

To increase the dramatic effect Photoshop was used to bring out details that might have been lost, such as the pants leg and the jacket sleeves. The upper right background was toned down to wrap the subject more closely. More picky adjustments were made to the face. Using the Liquify Tool in PS the face was thinned just a bit and the eyes pumped up one click using the bloat section of Liquify. Because of the character in the face's ruggedness very little was done to remove texture and lines.

1 comments:

K. Marciante said...

I just LOVE this portrait!! Couldn't be any better - the lighting, composition, posing and expression are perfect! The model did a great job too! It's one of my favorites!