PHOTOSHOP PRACTICE & CHARACTER TESTS

I took photos of Matt in the costumes that I rented. I also tried a bit of photo manipulation and discovered some things I do and don't like.

Matt in the BAKER costume, which I will use for both "Pat a Cake" and "Rub a Dub Dub". Our kitchen isn't ready for the shoot tomorrow yet, but I just wanted to see what the framing should be like. I did a bit of photoshop on his face and body, wasn't too happy with it but I'll keep trying...

Matt in the BUTCHER costume, shirt tucked in and with a tie around his waste. He is standing in the tub I'm going to use. Maybe it would be funny to have everyone stand in their own tub?

BUTCHER with untucked shirt.

Here I did a lot of photoshop work, compare it to the original above. I tried to make him look as painterly as possible. I felt that desaturation helped a lot in that aspect after I edited highlights and shadows.

I wanted the butcher to maybe be sitting in the tub with a piece of meat on his head looking sort of bewildered so Matt graciously modeled that for me.

This is the CANDLESTICK MAKER (no candle for now). This is something interesting I found out about lighting. This is a normally exposed photo, notice he is really close to the light so his face is a little blown out. Then look at the following...

Here is that same photo but UNDEREXPOSED. I feel that the dramatic lighting does a lot for the feel of the photo and helps in looking more theatrical. 

And when I DESATURATE it, it helps even more with the painterly aspect.

For our interviews, since we had to take a portrait of the person we interviewed, I decided to practice my painterly technique on the portrait I took of Andy.

Original

Edited

I really like the results and I feel like the painterly effect works a lot better when there are large surface to be edited rather than tiny object. Unfortunately my pictures won't be that way. Maybe I should take portraits of everyone? Another thing though, even though I find that my editing can be successful, I should concentrate on a better original photo!

"RUB A DUB DUB" & "PAT A CAKE" PHOTOSHOOTS

I posted on LAcasting this week and got a good amount of response in such a short period of time. On wednesday I went to the Malaga Cove Costume Closet and rented outfits for both shoots! The scheduled shoot times are this Saturday night for "Pat a Cake" and Sunday for "Rub a Dub Dub"

"PAT A CAKE"
Location: Kitchen in my apartment

Baker

Baker's Assistant

"RUB A DUB DUB"
Location: Temescal Gateway Park. Originally I wanted to do this in an inside tub but the colors and the overall scene didn't seem right. It also seemed too modern. Instead I have a metal tub that isn't big enough for them to fit in, but I want to place it at the park by a stream as if they have crash landed there. Each character will be out and about doing their own thing.

Candlestick Maker

Baker

Butcher

HDR PHOTOGRAPHY

HDR photography is a technique I've been familiar with but have not had the chance to try myself. The style it gives off is certainly a painterly style, although I'm not sure if it's exactly the kind I want. The pictures above show how HDR photos can be edited differently for a more or less dramatic effect. I will have to experiment to see if this is indeed a technique I should be using. 

MORE EUGENIO RECUENCO

These photos are actually from a film he did for an ad campaign. I just LOVE his cinematic style and after extensive research, all I can learn about his technique is that his lighting is very precise and dramatic. These photos also show that costuming is very important, including the hairstyle of the man and heavy, heavy makeup to make them look more painterly.

LIGHTING RESEARCH: PHOTOFLEX LIGHTING - USING LIGHTS OUTSIDE

This is a brief overview of the photoflex lighting lesson on outdoor lighting.

Sunlight only

Huge light panel used to diffuse sunlight.

Soft gold light panel to reflect back light to make shadows softer.

Another Light Panel in front of the model to reflect light back onto subject. (final shot)

another final shot

Of course a lot of things can be learned from this lesson but if I want the painterly effect I may have to do something different and actually allow for more shadows and contrast. Further research is needed...

LIGHTING RESEARCH: ANNIE LEIBOVITZ'S PAINTERLY EFFECT

Many of the photos I've researched and loved are the ones that have a surreal sort of painterly effect. I did a bit of research and came upon some tidbits of how it's achieved in Annie Leibovitz's work.

The following entires are taken from a forum in dpreview.com and talk about the Leibovitz's Queen Elizabeth photos above:

"A light is a light. don't even look at the brand unless you're looking for an effect other than "this head fills up an umbrella with light", such as "this head can annihilate sunlight at high noon at 50 feet" or "this head has such a short duration that it can stop a bullet". As long as you've got enough Ws out of your light, the brand means bupkus. you could fill a softbox with disposable camera flashes wired together and get the same light you'd have gotten from a profoto.

I would expect Annie to have used a gridded (or flagged), huge softbox for the shots with the queen. When BG is under, the subject will naturally seem to give off light. Also, I'd bet a good deal of post was done for the images. She wasn't shy about including digitally stitched files in the book (and even admits to cutting the queen out to paste into a garden scene), so I would expect that the majority of the effect is from post"

"I notice the use of an umbrella box quite a bit in clips of her work. Has anyone got any views on the pros and cons of these. Is it just a softbox with a round instead of square highlight? or are there any other advantages?

You are right about there being some post production work as in her book "at work" she says she shot the stormy garden background separately the night before.

The painterly look seems to come from the dynamic range of the image being really well controled (at least partly by the lighting). Is it likely that some sort of post production technique is used to further smoothout highlights and shadows"

"There was a making-of video on youtube and featured on Strobist. They took the video off youtube but the entry on the strobist is still there - http://strobist.blogspot.com/.../12/annie-and-elizabeth-minute-by-minute.html

As far as I can remember, one of the photos of Queen Elizabeth was done with natural light and a large Photek umbrella box or octabox.

I guess there is some special retouching recipe at work in Annie's images.

You can get some sneak peaks here too -http://www.236.com/...feed/2008/04/30/queen_elizabeth_pwns_annie_lie_6220.php (there's an octabox at 00:19, a diffusing screen at 00:24)" 

"When you look at paintings from the renaissance, particularly the work of Rembrandt, and then the later works of Vermeer it becomes immediately apparent they had a profound understanding of how light worked, but they also learned how to accentuate the effects as well using mirrors and reflectors to create more dramatic contrast ratios. The final piece is the fact that they used very high quality pigments in their paints to increase the saturation of the colours.

So take these lessons over to photography. Strong directional lighting with fill lighting in the order of 1:3 or more. Most photography students never deviate very far from 1;1 lighting ratios with the occasional foray to 1:2. This can be very flattering, and good for reproduction, but its so safe and boring. Want painterly get drama, shadow, contrast, modelling, shaping. Learn how to feather the lighting, use the penumbra and umbra of the light source ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Umbra ). Add to this good saturated colour and an ability to expose for all this and you have got it licked. This can all be done as Rembrandt did it with large windows, blinds, mirrors and reflectors. The UK photographer Lord Snowden had a daylight studio built in London to produce these effects, very few of his studio portraits are artificially lit.

The ability to pre-visualise and then have the skills to make that happen are very important"

I did a bit of research about prenumbra  and umbra and found out that beauty dishes are used to get beautiful portraits. While doing some research on that, I found this review on beauty dishes vs. gridded softboxes. Looks like the gridded softbox is what I should use in studio.

REFERENCE IMAGES FROM WILLIAM WEGMAN

I have just discovered that William Wegman has a Mother Goose book that I must find! But as for now, here are the images I could find on the internet:

Pat a Cake

Rub a Dub Dub

Jack & Jill