marlon

<p>Congrats on the book! I will check it out!</p>

<p>Liquify won't change how dark the elbows are.</p>

<p>I tend to soften up elbows and knees when they show...not to make it smooth like a Barbie, but just to even them out. I make an empty layer and use the clone stamp with a soft brush at a low opacity and just lightly go over the dark/rough areas. Adjust layer opacity to taste so it blends in, and I usually put a little bit of noise (how much depends on your camera's resolution) to give it some texture to blend in.</p>

<p>If your strobes have strong modelling lights you can put the lights close and just shoot wide open at a higher ISO. </p>

<p>^ Exactly what Mark says. I usually lasso around the subject, feather about 5-10 pixels, copy the background to a new layer, then apply gaussian about 30-40 (depends on your camera / photo's resolution), and then I just mask out any bleeding onto the subject, then I add about 4% of noise to this layer and it takes care of the banding. </p>

<p>I usually try to avoid this as much as possible, by lighting the background properly to begin with, but with portable background stands and papers and whatever sometimes you just get those kinks.</p>

<blockquote>

<p>Wow...a marketing guy!....and all this incite and advise from the empirical data of ONE opinion.</p>

</blockquote>

<p><br /><br>

^ Took the words out of my mouth, Dave.</p>

<p>And it's also good to keep a backup of the catalogue on your computer as well as your hard disk. Sometimes the catalogue files get corrupted or deleted, and it's good to have all your changes and selections in 2 separate places.</p>

<p>And like Patrick said we can have a beer at the terrace at McKibbins and look at your work :p</p>

<p>Lighting looks pretty good. I don't know why you would want a 2nd light for this shot, the shadows still have detail in them. The eyes look great. The only thing I would've done, personally, would be to not have the light too close because his forehead is close to blowing out and it gets darker on the other side so that's some pretty heavy fall-off, but overall it's a fantastic shot.</p>

<p>I would've just cropped out the white baseboard in camera so it would be a solid background! I like the colour, though! I have grey walls in my house and will use them for quick head shots if someone's over! :)</p>

<p>Hue/Saturation adjustment layer. In the drop-down menu choose each colour, one at a time, and drag the opacity down to 0. Obviously, don't do this for Cyan.</p>

<p>I see that as minimal post. 1 curves layer if anything and a vignette.</p>

<p>Hey David. When I'm inspired by a vintage look I do kind of what Mike's talking about. I take out my eyedropper tool in PS (press I) and I look at the shadows and highlights with it. When you look in the info pane you can see how the colours are pushed (check the RGB values of the "blacks"), and the contrast (the highest/lowest black/white points) and then just try to emulate with curves. Hope this pushes you in the right direction!</p>

<p>There are also interesting effects you can do with with solid colours or luminosity masks with solid colours on weird blend modes at low opacities. </p>

<p>I'm with Brooks... </p>

<p>1. Never schedule a shoot midday. <br>

2. I've had problems before fighting the sun with a 1600 w/s strobe</p>

<p>If you're going to use this softbox, at least take out the internal diffusion panel, it'll save you about a stop.</p>

<p>:D</p>

<p>Here, Harry: http://bit.ly/xplqY3</p>

<p>Check out the Ru Paul plug-in by Nik Software... coming in late 2012.</p>

<p>I do a lot of catalogue and web work for a big shoe retail in chain in Canada. This week I was shooting some of the Spring lineup and there were a few pairs of neon coloured boots. Neon yellow, neon red, neon green etc... think hi-liter colours. The reds and yellows always got clipped... I need to keep to the lighting consistent so I just did two exposures, one for the background and one underexposed on the boot and combined in Photoshop. Luckily it was just a on a plain, grey background so was easy to isolate.</p>

<p>Rodeo Joe has the right idea. I've never tried with black lights, but it's not the kind of contract that merits it.</p>

<p>I'm pretty sure this wasn't all done in-camera. Patrick Lavoie frequents this site and he's a professional retoucher and he works with all the top photographers in our city who are all very competent shooters yet, he still gets work because some clients need a specific look and this is trendy and you can't get a desaturated, washed out image straight out of camera like that.</p>

<p>Hey David, for these washed out looks try out something like this:</p>

<p>Make a curve's adjustment and push up the bottom left hand point up maybe 5-10 points which muddies up the blacks. You can also bring the top right point down which can muddy up the highlights as well.</p>

<p>Also, try making an adjustment with a solid colour and change the blend mode to "difference" but use a very low opacity like 3-5%.</p>

<p>I feel like Jeff's head is going to explode if someone asks another DPI question today :)</p>

<p>Shooting for free is definitely ok to get started. I'm a full time commercial photographer, and I still do TFP work every once in a while. You should, however, only charge for your time when you start offering a product worth charging for. If you can convince people to pay you though, all the power to you! But, if Av/Tv settings for you is "getting creative" then this might be a bit of an adventure.</p>

<p>Basic tips... make sure your light goes high enough. Sometimes with these shop lights they're too low and you get weird "campfire" like lighting which makes them look like their in a horror movie. Do you have anything to diffuse the light with, like a big white sheet? Those lights are pretty harsh and when you're shooting a woman you generally use soft light.</p>

<p>Posing... a general tip would be to make sure her shoulders aren't completely square to camera. Get her to slightly rotate so one shoulder is closer to the camera than other. Obviously there are lots of head-on shots that are incredible, but this is safe to start off with.</p>

<p>Play with head angles. A head tilted to lower shoulder is a bit more powerful, whereas the head tilted to the higher shoulder is considered more feminine. Also, look up short lighting, which is more flattering on most people.</p>

<p>I dunno... there are a lot of tips I can give those are just off the top of my head.</p>

<p>OH. Make sure the lens cap is off!<br>

Good luck!</p>

<p>^ +1 to Jeff. It's still the same number of pixels, doesn't matter how many of them per inch, which you can always change in any image editor.</p>

<p>I'm with the others... the 24-70 is a great all-around lens, I've shot many events using just it. However, I would never say it was sharper than my 50mm or my 70-200. However, if you look at my photos in studio I doubt you could tell which was taken with which lens.</p>

<p>To reiterate what Zack is saying, you can micro adjust the lens to suit the camera. All cameras and lenses have a tolerance, and sometimes the body and the lens are on opposite sides of the spectrum. For $59 you can try a lens calibrator: http://spyder.datacolor.com/product-cb-spyderlenscal.php - in fact, my local camera shop actually allows you to use theirs for a few bucks a lens. You should see if anyone in your area can do that and try it out!</p>

<p>The lighting's not too complicated - it looks like it could be done with two lights... one reflector behind to camera left for the rim, and then probably a pan reflector or two for the main. </p>

<p>As for the tone, they're trying to capture old vintage film tones... I would do it in Photoshop, and it's probably mostly curves. There isn't a lot of contrast here, look at the lack construction paper, and the top of her stalking - so I would raise the black point by a bit. In the red channel I would boost reds right in the middle, and then a bit of yellow too to give it an orange cast. I would also make a new empty layer and select a big soft brush at a low opacity and put one orange dot in the middle (blend mode to linear dodge), which would give that aged spot - look how it fades the guys she's holding from left to right.<br>

There is also some dodging on her face, chest and arms. </p>

<p>That's how I see it being put together if you want to go the digital route. Good luck!</p>

<p>Hey Leon, not bad if this was your first time using strobes! Congrats on the baby & your wife is very pretty!<br>

- The first thing that stands out to me is the super bright highlight on the top of her cheek turning to dark black at the bottom, this means your soft box is pretty close, and that's why you're getting that dramatic fall off.<br>

- Brian's correct about the catch light... and this actually could have been a perfect portrait had you just told your wife to lift her chin a few inches (I think her bangs are blocking the light). Part of shooting people with lighting is to get that perfect position which is sometimes a game of inches.<br>

- Your softbox is a great size for a full body portrait. Obviously we'd all love 7' parabolics in our homes, but that's not always available. 1m tall is fine. You'll always get falloff in full body portraits unless you use a lot of fill flash, which will also kill some of your contrast or want to be very precise with flags. It's a personal thing, but you'll start noticing in magazines and in ads that some portraits have legs that are 2 stops darker or more.<br>

- Don't change the background. Though, next time put the light a bit more to the side, turn it a bit more so that it's feathered and you'll get some nice feathering on the background too. In studio I stand a bit farther and sometimes shoot at 200mm just so the background is a smaller patch due to the lens. Obviously you don't have that space. Changing background colours is also a bit iffy sometimes. It just doesn't look "right." just add a bit of a vignette and it'll smooth it out a bit.<br>

- You probably don't need the reflector. In a small room like that light is going to bounce all over. When she starts showing and you do more belly stuff one light close + reflector to fill in shadows will be great, though.<br>

- Did you use your 2nd strobe as a fill near the camera? If you did then the power needs to be up to fill those shadows, if not... try it instead of the reflector! Sometimes it's hard to get the reflector in the sweet spot, or get it close enough to be affective. If you've got the 2nd light then go for it!<br>

- Have fun, experiment, and enjoy!</p>

<p>lol...I have an in-house contract for a few hours a week at a big shoe store in Montreal. One of my first moves was replacing their Gemini 500r's with Einsteins... I hate the Geminis.</p>

<p>I don't use Craigslist or Model Mayhem but I believe if you're posting in "jobs" it's supposed to be for paid work only. Or someone is just being a jerk to you, possibly another photographer because that's the kind of pettiness we like to display in our industry.</p>