I find it amusing that we can use photoshop to create photojobs pretty easily.

Note these two images.

The after image is contrasty to the point of bad taste, but there are some elements of it that I like a lot. The contrast in the hair is one. The other is getting the eyes to 'pop' like that.

I'm assuming that there is some way to get photographs done in the studio closer and closer to that effect. My guess is that carefully applied light is the solution.

So my question is, how does one get:

1) Interesting hair to get an almost ridiculous amount of contrast? 2) Eyes to pop out at you (by jacking up contrast) 3) Do 1 & 2 without making the rest of the face look completely washed out?

Mind you, I'm not looking for the "holy high key effect". But I'd like to get more emphasis of hair and eyes in my photos.

-- edward kang (ekang@cse.nd.edu), January 17, 2002

Answers

The short answers to your questions: Carefully applied light, overexposure, and push processing the film to increase contrast. I've tried something similar to this but haven't seriously tried to work out the details. (I have a related idea involving similar procedures but producing a different final result that I'll probably be testing in the next month.)

The image below is a step in the direction of what you're looking for, not a serious attempt at achieving the look you've described.

This was shot on outdated Kodak 100HC (High Contrast) pushed one stop. The lighting was very flat from heavily overcast skies. This was scanned on an old scanner; the shadow detail is better on the slide. I set exposure by taking a spot reading of her face at EI 160, then opening up about 1.5 stops.

Since my subject's hair was so dark, I would have needed to light it significantly more (preferably with a more specular source) to give it the kind of "pop" in your manipulated image.

The big jump in contrast in your image would need something like a two-stop push. And you'll need to keep the lighting fairly flat to keep the shadows from losing too much detail.

-- Mike Dixon (mike@mikedixonphotography.com), January 17, 2002.

Mike makes some good points, but I'm not sure you aren't just looking at what your scanner did. It was pretty easy to get a lot more out of this image with about two minutes of work in PS from the original scan. The scan looks very uncorrected or the film was improperly profiled by the scanner software. But all the info was there already. Here's my two minute makeover, and I apologize for the slight blue cast I left in.

-- Jeff Spirer (jeff@spirer.com), January 17, 2002.

Looking at this again, you also need to do something about the bags under her eyes. Maybe makeup (Mike knows far more about this than I do)but also PS can fix it up pretty quickly. This one has a slightly different color balance too, since I don't know what she looks like and didn't like the blue.

By the way, just moving over the black point slider in Levels fixes many of the problems with the appearance of the image, which leads me to believe that it really is a scan problem.

-- Jeff Spirer (jeff@spirer.com), January 17, 2002.

If you'll notice, the manipulated version has essentially exaggerated the lighting: the hair now looks backlit, increasing the contrast and between the highlights and shadow detail, while the light on the face has been completely flattened - similar to what you would get if you had a direct light above the camera and significant amounts of fill coming from below - the classic glamour/beauty setup. The current shot looks like open shade, with not enough fill from below. Of course you'd still want to increase the contrast digitally or through appropriate exposure and development.

But my question is, are you doing this to make better portraits - or to get something closer to a fashion or beauty shot look?

Good fashion/beauty photography is a combination of a lot of factors - many of them not related to the photographer's technique. First, your model has to have great skin and makeup, as well as hair color, texture, volume, and styling. The important thing to remember is that makeup and hair for photography are vastly different from everyday looks. (You are creating a two-dimensional image that only has to last for a few minutes - not a three-dimensional one that has to be practical for everyday wear.)

But no matter how good the makeup artist, hairstylist, and lighting, the model is paramount. She is both figuratively and literally the foundation upon which everything else is built. Unfortunately, just because someone is attractive (like this girl) doesn't mean she will make an ideal model. One reason why fashion models are so slender is to accentuate their bone structure. It's that bone structure that catches the light (accentuated by the makeup, of course). A model with a filled-out face like this one, is never going to be able to provide the same impact - though you can certainly create a shot that she will be happy with. The same, of course, applies to the entire figure for fashion shots. A 5'2" glamour model - though perhaps very sexy - is not going to look like a 5'10" fashion model no matter what you do.

Any additional tweaking necessary is easy to do by masking in Photoshop and applying the effects to specific areas. (One thing we forget is that the final fashion, beauty, or glamour shot is never what the photographer creates. It then goes to a digital retoucher - sometimes for a major rework.)

-- John Kantor (jkantor@mindspring.com), January 18, 2002.

I just love how people are always trying to do something with the image after they already have the image on film. I like what was said about prof. models vrs. just a better photo. what your trying to do is not correcting or repair but replacing. Her hair is dull and probably is so in person your wanting to add whats not there. The light in her eyes was a problem at the get go. Keep light in the eyes if thats what your looking for,don't cause yourself so much work. In the end YOU may be tickled pink with your final result, but the customer will ultamtely choose what they like . Don't get me wrong, I love what PS can do. I shoot 35 / med / and dig I love somthing about them all . But unless your one of the very few in the world shooting on location and demanding wounderful fees for them. remember your regular customer out there the real bread and butter for the majority for photographer want a good picture not somthing that needs 4 weeks of touch ups. work simple and work from the heart.

-- (tekmn20@yahoo.com), February 21, 2002.