To PS or not to PS

For years I refused to use photoshop as a creative tool. The only feature I ever touched was the healing brush to remove some blemishes. I really believed that a photo had to made the moment you pushed the shutter button. To be honest I still believe that this is the way it ought to be.

But … at a given moment I started to realize that I was simply not going to be able to reach the desired level of photographs just by solving problems at run time. Because of lack of the right gear, the lack of a Tyra Banks clone, the lack of proper styling and location and most importantly the lack of knowledge. So I sold my soul to photoshop. I ‘ve been picking up some great techniques in photoshop but still have a long way to go.

I still believe however that I am only making minor adaptations in photoshop but sometimes they can make a world of difference. The images below show the result of a 5 minute effort. It is far from perfect I know but it does make a difference.
The moment I started using photoshop was the moment I started to get likes on facebook. Everyone knows that there is no better measure than facebook likes LOL

Soft Whitney

After following a Photoshop workshop last year I thought I had discovered the Holy Grail. A very simple workflow was presented, which can be used on every photo. The workflow is basically meant to support fashion / beauty shots. Adding contrast, enhancing shades and high lights and altering the general look and feel (color). Simple enough, having said that, I still have to practice a lot to get the technique into my fingers. But I do understand the principles so in the end it boils down to practice, practice, practice.

I have been using this workflow quite extensively and with great satisfaction. And most of the time I get the result I was looking for. As mentioned before it is a workflow which is best suited for fashion and beauty. Problem is that I don’t do either one of them, I don’t know how my style would be best described, no-one ever asked so I did not bother to think about it. If someone would ask, I’d probably have to say … FUN, yep that’s it, FUN would be my style. I know you don’t see a lot of FUN in my pictures but believe me it is a lot of FUN shooting these photos.

Enough with the small talk. What I wanted to tell you, not every picture needs to be a beauty / fashion shot with high contrasts and over saturated colors. You sometimes want to create a soft look with almost no contrast and color. To achieve this I had to drop my beloved workflow and explore some different roads.

No longer afraid of all the different sliders in Lightroom, I had a shot at it. In the end I came up with something I liked, nice thing about it, I did not have to go into Photoshop to do additional post processing. To get the soft look of the included pictures I just pulled a couple of sliders down. The blacks down to 0 or 1, contrast down to 0 to 10, increase the fill light if necessary, slide down the clarity -10 will do and a slight desaturation. And you are done. Dead easy.



As always I was pretty pleased with the result until I had a second look at it. This method ain’t final yet, it will need a lot of tweeking but for now I’ll have to do with it.



The main lesson: don’t be afraid of the sliders, it took me a couple of years to get over my sliderphobia but now I am totally cured. A complete new world is opening up to me.

Whitney - nd filter

The DOF helping hand. As we all know there are three parameters which determine the Depth Of Field.

Aperture
Distance to subject
focal distance

When working with models in studio you are sometimes limited in your options:

You can't shoot with full aperture, because your light source is to bright and your sync speed limits your shutterspeed, and yes you want to keep your light as close to your model as possible.
You can't sneek up on her because of lens distortion or minimal focus distance (although I love doing this, love those big noses).
using a longer lens is a good starting point, but it is just not enough

Your main problem is the amount of light coming out of your studio flashes, using nd fiters can help you out. There are nd filters which you can put in front of your flash or nd filters you can put on your lens. I chose the latter. By using the nd filter I was able to open up my aperture, delivering me a nice DOF.

I only took a couple of test shots, did not want to waste to much time on it, but was pretty pleased with the result. Next time I'll spend some more time experimenting with the nd filter.



Thank you Whitney to let me have a shot on this setup, I know you had to have a lot of patience with me, but hopefully you will be pleased with the result, a lot of pictures to follow.