Emilia at Creative Behaviours

Emilia

A final image is like the tip of an iceberg of the creative process that lies beneath. There is the time in post processing and the time in the studio capturing the moment. But there is also the lifetime of experiences and the mood on the day that the photographer and the subject bring to the image.

It is the process that leads up to creating the final image that I truly love. The time spent in galleries, looking at books, being inspired by movies, problems solved, obstacles overcome, experimenting, the failures, as well as the successes.

For this portrait of Emilia I drew my inspiration from Annie Leibovitz and the painter Francisco Goya.

The Setup
The images were taken at Creative Behaviours Studio, a natural light studio in Footscray. I used a dove grey seamless roll of paper as a background for two reasons. Savage Dove Grey is close to 18% grey so colour correcting the image in post is straightforward. Secondly it is easy to make it look like an Oliphant Canvas using a drop-in texture in post. The grey seamless paper was hung so that it just touched the floor. I used a wooden trunk as a prop for posing. I like to work free of any tethering or tripod as I find they both become a distraction. I did have an iPad Mini for referencing various setups with Emilia.

I like to work with formal setups and then change them up in response to the subject and the day. By starting with formal poses, I was then able to capture the moment that was the final image. I knew I had the shot as soon as I pressed the shutter. We used setups of Nicole Kidman and Jennifer Lawrence to get us started from a swipe-file I’d put together before the shoot. It was at the end of the session that Emilia settled naturally into the pose for the final image.

Original pose inspired by Nicole Kidman and Jennifer Lawrence

Annie Leibovitz – Jennifer Lawrence, Nicole Kidman

An Elinchrom Limeitov 190cm Octa was positioned at camera left almost front on and angled down. This positioning gave a classic beauty loop lighting with a faint shadow to the right of Emilia’s nose. Loop lighting was favoured by Hollywood Studios in the 1940’s. As Emilia was looking to build up her portfolio for acting, the lighting choice seemed appropriate.

Camera Settings
For the shoot I used my Nikon D810 with the Nikon 24-70mm f2.8 lens. Because I wanted a sharp image from front to back I used an aperture of f8.0 at an ISO of 64 for a clean noise free file. For me the initial RAW image is equivalent to a film negative, I want the best possible starting point in camera. I also wanted a small amount of ambient light from the south facing windows to blend in with the studio lighting to give the image a soft natural look.

• Camera: Niokn D810
• Mode: Manual
• ISO: 64
• Aperture: f8.0
• Shutter Speed: 1/200
• Lens: Nikon 24-70mm f2.8 @70mm

Gear Guide
The only modifier I own is the versatile 60” shoot though umbrella which I use on location with small battery strobes. The umbrella can be used shoot through, bounced, or closed down to provide a more directional source. Adding a scrim across the opening provides a quick and dirty indirect octa like a Photek Softlighter as used by Annie Leibovitz.

When I’m in a renting studio for portfolio work I prefer to hire the best lighting I can get my hands on. This means that my money isn’t tied up in expensive studio fear with limited use or compromised by budget. I can also write the expense of hiring off as an expense come tax time or pass on the cost to paying clients.

I hired the Elinchrom Indirect Litemotiv Octa 190cm and an Elinchrom ELC Pro HD Flash 1000ws from Kayell. I chose the Elinchrom Octa Leitmotiv Octa 190cm as it is the largest modifier I could find. I wanted to work with the large south facing window lighting at the studio, not against them. I used a C-Stand for the light which was OK, but next time I would look at using a roller stand for the added portability.

Post Processing
To get the look I wanted I used a combination of tools in post processing. I used Lightroom as a starting point to get the cleanest image to work with. I then used Color Efex Pro for softening the skin and later for adding warmth to the image. The heavy lifting was done in Photoshop to add the texture to the background and the colour grading for the overall mood of the picture. One more trip back to Lightroom allowed me to sharpen the eyes, add my signature lighting to the background, a vignette and finally tweak the highlights and contrast.

Tools:

• Workflow - Lightroom
• Filters - Nik Color Effex
• Editor - Photoshop 
• Pen and Graphics Tablet – Wacom Intuos Photo Small

Original RAW image

1. To give the image the best starting point in Lightroom I did the following:

• Cropped the image to a square format to emulate a medium format camera. The square format worked with Emilia’s pose as well as giving the final image a mid century medium format look.
• Selected Camera Neutral as the Camera Calibration and Zeroed all the presets to give me the cleanest starting point. Like a blank canvas, I wanted to add in colour, texture and contrast without adding in any digital artefacts from existing presets. I also wanted a flat painterly look for the final image as well.
• Enabled Profile Corrections and Remove Chromatic Aberrations.
• Selected the White Balance Tool and clicked the gray background to set a neutral White Balance.
• Adjusted Shadows and highlights as required.
• Added overall sharpening by accepting the default settings with masking of around 80 to restrict where sharpening is applied – on Emilia’s face and hair and not on the background

2. I sent the image to Color Efex Pro and selected the default Dynamic Skin Softener settings. I could have done this in Photoshop bit it would have taken more time for little or no added benefit.
3. Back in Lightroom I sent the image to Photoshop where I created a Clean-up layer to tidy up skin blemishes and stray hairs.
4. Added a dodge and burn layer for added depth.
5. Added texture to the background to give it the Oliphant painted textured canvas look. I used a Layer mask to paint out the texture from Emilia. I did this using an Intuos Tablet pen. This was the first time I used the pen for editing. What a revelation it was.

Goya’s The Family of the Duke and Duchess of Osuna

6. To set the tone of the photo I chose to colour grade the photo using Colour lookup adjustments. For this image I chose to mimic the rich warm, almost murky palette of Goya’s The Family of the Duke and Duchess of Osuna.

Image colour graded in Photoshop with added background texture

7. Back in Lightroom I added the finishing touches.

• Using Color Efex Pro I selected Wedding Dress from the White Neutraliser filter for added warmth.
• Using an adjustment brush I added contrast and sharpness to Emilia’s eyes
• With an exposure setting of -1, I added background lighting inspired by Goya’s family portrait.
• Selected Vignette 2 to darken the edges and highlight Emilia further.
• Finessed the Shadows, Highlights, Contrast and Saturation sliders for the final image.

The finished image in look and feel was pretty much how I imagined it to be. But it was what Emilia bought to the day with the final pose that bought the image to life. It’s worth noting that the post processing evolved over a number of days as I returned to the image with fresh eyes each time working on other images from the session in between. I’m reminded of the old Wabi Sabi saying: “nothing is ever finished, nothing lasts for ever, nothing is perfect.” Sometimes you just have to know when to stop.

Original RAW image

Final retouched image