December 2006 Tech

Another year is passing. I sincerely hope this past years Online Studio has helped you achieve the results you wanted in your glamour photos.  In 2006 you saw a change in the DCC Photo website. We offered more technical information & tech links then ever befor, and finally all the services of DCC Photo & Digital Imaging was made available to its web clients.  Thank's to everyone for helping DCC have another successful year.

This month’s Onine Studio image was created with three lights and a homemade cookie to form the shape behind Diana.  The effects were done in Post production using Photoshop

The idea was to have window light falling on the subject as if she was basking in sunlight. Two issues; the fist was there is no window that would generate that type of pattern and with no window there was no window light!

Here is how this was done. A sheet of foam core was cut out to produce the pattern. Simple and cheap!
The 32 x 48 foam core “cookie” was placed on a boom stand and a 600 ws head with 5” Spill-kill reflector located 36 inches away from it. Both the cookie and head were adjusted to create an oblique angle

On the extreme right of the camera was a 36x48 Chimera Soft Box with a grid (talk about weight)  set to 150 ws. Finally on the camera left and almost overhead was a 7 “ reflector with a 30 degree grid spot aimed at Diana’s face.

A Spot meter reading was taken where the highlights from the cookie fell on Diana  This reading was f=11. A second set of readings were taken from the softbox and grid, and they were both adjusted to produce f=8.

It was now just a simple matter of shoot at will.

In post production, the levels were adjusted first!  Then a duplicate layer from the original was made. The layer was sepia toned and after toning the toned layer was merged with the duplicate that was made. From there in Filters>Diffuse Glow was selected and the glow adjusted to my taste. Finally the Opacity of the glow layer was reduced. All Layers were merged and saved as a Tiff.

NOTE: I always work in TIFF  Camera: Nikon D200 Lens: 17-35 Sigma Lights: Calumet Elite II 2400 ws