Guest Blogger: Douglas Levy
Tuesday, June 30, 2009 at 4:08PM Well it's been 12 days with no posts here and it is unacceptable! Since we are super busy here making sure you get what you need on time we decided to ask another local photog to write a blog entry for us featuring some images he has shot here at LensProToGo Studios. Doug is a local photographer/lighting extraordinaire/pro umpire that I met several years ago through a mutual friend. If you are into Strobist lighting you should definitely check out his work here. Ohh and his landscapes are definitely worth checking out as well. Without a further adieu here is what he sent us:
What if, a friend of yours opened a studio, hired another friend of yours, then purchased your “when I win the lotto” wishlist of photo gear and said, “Come on over and play with my stuff whenever you want to.”
Well that’s essentially what Paul has done with LensProToGo. Where else could I ever have the chance to play with a 200 F/2, a 300 F/2.8 and Profoto lights? (Unless I invited myself to Chase Jarvis’ studio in Seattle that is).
Last week Paul was kind enough to let me play with many of his toys while shooting my girlfriend Jess. She wanted some new shots for her portfolio and I wanted to play with Paul’s toys.
I shot most of the photos you see here (you can see the full gallery from the shoot here), with the ridiculously sharp (and heavy) Nikon 200mm F/2 on my D700. (The 200 is so insanely sharp I had to remove outline of Jess’s contact lens in post).
Here’s a shot of the lighting setup for almost all of the photos (in some the rim light didn’t fire, but the main light didn’t move).
And here’s a diagram with the overhead view of the setup
Shooting subjects in profile doesn’t work for everyone, but with main light slightly behind Jess, I was able to put a shadow on the near side of her face, which added both depth and contrast to the images.
Also, while this post isn’t about post-production, I thought I’d share one of my favorite sharpness/contrast tricks, after my good friend Mark Fleming asked how I made my images pop.
I learned this from Dan Marguilis’ LAB Color book (highly recommended, but it does read a bit like a graduate level text).
When you’re completely done editing, press CTRL+ALT+SHIFT+E (replace CTRL with CMD on a Mac), to merge all the visible layers on your file (warning, this doubles your file size)(second warning, I use too many parenthesis). Then using the unsharp mask filter, set your amount to 30 and your radius to 60. The amount you’ll use depends on your file size, but I find that the radius should be about double the amount, and the amount usually works between 20 and 40.
After you apply the unsharp mask, immediately press CTRL+SHIFT+F to fade the adjustment and change the blending mode to Luminosity (this ensures minimal artifacting and that your colors won’t shift on you). The final step is to create a black layer mask and paint with a white brush on the areas you want to see this adjustment (remember, white reveals, black conceals).
That’s it for now, but thanks again to Paul and Tony and the great folks at LensProToGo for letting me play in their Chocolate Factory for a day.
To see the full gallery from the shoot, click here.
Questions? Did I lose you after the first paragraph? E-mail me or leave a comment here and I’ll do my best to answer all of the questions. If you want more Doug (and I mean, who doesn’t), you can find me at my site, my blog, and Twitter.
