LightningPaul

Instead of a very young model with a perfect smooth skin I wanted to portrait someone full of character. This really nice but older man already experienced a lot in his life. All of that is scarfed into his face. Far too unique for not capturing that. I was very happy he agreed. He was even surprised why I choose him above all the other young beautiful people. It made him feel more special. Enjoy the look.


TECH-INFO: in this image I used a mix of strobist methods, HDR techniques and a bit of Photoshop processing.

To avoid the harsh sunlight I asked the man to stand in the shadow. The face it is lit using ambient light. To let the man stand out I asked a friend to hold a snooted speedlight flash behind the man and at the right of the camera. This lights provides some rim and hair back light. A shot a couple of RAW files, this was one of the very good ones.

For processing I decided to use HDR techniques to fully enhance the strong characteristics of his face. Therefore I made three exposures with one and half stop difference of one RAW file using DxO Optics Pro. In Photomatrix Pro I merged them into a HDR file and tone mapped it. In Photoshop I started with the layers: the tone mapped one and the middle exposure (which is directly converted from the RAW file). I used the latter one for the background and cloths. The tone mapped version was only used for his face. In that version the background was not looking good. I added a couple of extra adjustment layers (mostly contrast and color selective tool) to enhance the face, especially eyes and teeth even more. Also the background is darkened.

Normally using HDR techniques is the worst you can do for portraits. But just as a fish eye lens is normally not suitable for portraits at all, I wanted to try it anyway. It's sort of "breaking the rules". Please let me know what you think.