Two Shoes is not in right now...: Choices and Choices....

I love the the possibilites of working with RAW files. Importing a fresh batch of pictures is like opening all your Christmas presents at once. Of course, if you have done your job as a photographer correctly, you should have a pretty good idea of what you should be getting. There are so many directions that a picture can go, sometimes it can be a bit overwhelming, especially when you have a vast amount of engaging pictures. I struggle sometimes to focus and figure out what it is that I want out of the picture. The matter is only made more complicated by the fact that I shoot mostly people. The challenge as an editorial/ portraiture photographer is to carry the feel or atmosphere of one or an entire series of pictures through from the time of looking through the lens to the final delivery after post-production. Often what I see and imagine to be there or not be there, is very different to what the final viewer encounters. This is the real challenge, making sure that this consistency is present throughout.

Im just going to include everyone here instead of just us photo-nerds. For those that don't know what a RAW file is, here is the breakdown. The file format you get out of a normal point and shoot camera, iPhone and most other consumer camera's is a .JPEG. JPEG's are a compressed file that holds a less informative digital signature. Looking at a print of the a JPEG side by side with a RAW file straight out of camera you cant tell the difference. The beauty of RAW is that it contains all the information that you could want for post production, this is where JPEG falls short as it does contain some digital info, but very little. I guess a fitting analogy would be to say that shooting JPEG is like going to a shop and buying a sandwich off the menu, shooting RAW is like owning a sandwich factory. Get the point? Good.

I recently shot a model from the local agency, I have been "babysitting" the pictures for about two weeks now, this is a long time considering that they were extremely minimal headshots and 3/4 shots. I have been throwing some thoughts around regarding what I want to do in my post production phase, and tried some of them, failed, lost hope, tried again, got bored, failed, tried again, got side tracked, lost motivation, failed. It went on and on until now, whilst offshore with a solid few hours to kill I sat down with a full box of snus, an endless supply of chocochino's and some cookies I managed to produce. Half a snus box later I had something to show for. The only problem is that I think I produced too much. Yeah, I might have got a little bit carried away with experimenting with different colour palettes, tones, textures, split tones, effects, exposures, presences and hues. There is an endless combination of things and techniques you can apply to a set of pictures. To make things slightly easier to start out with, I narrowed down my selection to one photo. Something that would be easy to work with in terms of pure post-production. Something that had a near perfect exposure to start out with. I enjoy working with skin and eyes in particular, so this narrowed things down a bit more too. Eventually after making my final selection I took one that I met all of the above criteria. Here's what came out:

This is the original image, straight out of camera, no post-production, no retouching. As I said, this met all the criteria, near perfect exposure, good skin tones to work with, interesting, sharp eyes, a clean headshot all in all. There is one thing that bugs me though, the model's right eye is not holding the catch light as well as the left one. Something which is completely my fault. #inconsistency. However, no train smash. Another thing that helps is that the background is just shy of pure white. This way I have some room to play around with the shadows and fall-off light. Whats next? The work that goes into making a picture like simple, but thought out in details you dont see. I will not go through all of the points here, but here is a brief outline.

*Compositon- Notice how she isn't placed smack dead centre in the middle of the frame? Rule of thirds, a valuable tool, and worth remembering to add balance by creating an off-balance.

*Exposure- I shot this with two lights, one through a pure white umbrella, that was roughly 45degrees off to my right, angled down and +-80cm away from model, and the other behind the model facing the wall with no modifier, 2/3 of power over the key light.

*Catch lights- I always try to light the eyes in my headshots evenly, I blew it here, but it is an easy fix in post. The first thing you see when looking at a picture of a person is their eyes, this why I always try draw the attention there with a catch light. I always focus on the eye closest to me aswell.

*Make up and hair- I went for the minimalist look here, when you see the rest of the pictures in the series you will see why, the models natural features stand out more for headshots this way too. I also purposefully placed her hair behind her ear closest to me. This it to play on the shallow DOF I was shooting, notice how that ear is not in focus but they eyes are? Thats what I look for in my headshots.

*Posing- I play around with different poses when I shoot headshots, as a general rule though when I shoot guys or girls, I like to have the shoulders clean an neck clean, no bra straps, no jewellery, nothing that will distract from the models natural features. Posing also has a lot to say when shaping mood, feeling and atmosphere, here it isn't so apparent as this is just a headshot, so It comes down more to facial expression. I was fairly happy with the pose here, I liked the fall off of light on her neck and under her chin.

Right, so assuming I have covered these points whilst I'm shooting, I should be consistent and getting good results when I start looking through the images in post. So assuming I have got all the above to an acceptable standard, and that I am happy with what I am seeing on the camera, I shoot. I go through an entire shoot keeping all of these things in check. Finished shooting? Double check I have all the shots I set out to get, I like to think of this part as the Pokemon part, "gotta get 'em all!". Now the bittersweet process of post production can begin. For the sake of making things easier, I will exclude all the pictures I played with in Photoshop CS6. Photoshop is whole other can of worms when it comes to experimental portraiture. All of pictures that follow were retouched in Lightroom 3.5. Now you can see what I mean with the whole endless options of shooting RAW thing. These are a few of the images that I retouched from the original posted above. Will put up the full series in the next few days, until then, stay classy. N.

PS! - Click on the first picture and then you can browse through using the arrow keys to compare.

This was the first one I got cracking with, love the subtle tones and the crystal clear, sharp detail.

Bit of an old Polaroid feel to it, digging the grain and "roughness" of it.

Converting from colour to black and white is something that either works 100% or not, was a little unsure about whether these were better suited to B+W or colour.