I’ve been working on my skin retouching techniques to get my images up to better standards. I’ve stumbled on to some good approaches at it but nothing real solid. Apparently the ways of professional retouchers are closely guarded secrets. I’ve been able to dig up bits and pieces of techniques but I’ve yet to find a solid workflow. Here’s an example of something I’ve been working on:

I’m pretty happy with the results but somewhere along the way I lost a bit of the sharpness of the skin texture. I also made the skin so flawless that it now it looks fake. It looks great at 100% but when its reduced, things start to get soft.

Here’s a 100% crop of the cheek area:

See! Skin texture looks great to me at 100%… which makes me think that prints of this image will look great and I shouldn’t worry about what it looks like on screen at reduced sizes. Maybe I should look into different methods of resizing and sharpening.

What a long weekend…

Friday night was the 1st Annual Hooters Saltwater Cowboy Fishing Tournament. My friend Jed really wanted to fish it and asked me to fish with him. I have to admit that I wasn’t really excited. Inshore fishing isn’t one of my strengths. And snook is like my unicorn… my moby dick… the fish i just can not catch. But Jed and his friend Sean… they kill alot of snook… I was willing to bet on them. Besides, 1st prize was $1000. A $50 registration was like betting on my friends and I to win that money. I was game!

The captains meeting was at Hooters at 7pm… we were released at 9pm to start fishing. Jed, Sean, Derek and I were one of the first boats to leave Hooters and stopped right away on the river at one of their best snook holes. As I’m quietly dropping the anchor as to not spook any fish, I’m also watching tournament boats slowly passing us by in the no wake zone. Not 15 minutes go by and Sean’s first cast brings up a 31″ Snook… the fish we thought was going to be the hardest one to catch was just landed! Another 15 minutes go by and Jed gets a big hit on his rod. I start reeling in my line to get it out of his way and BAM! My rod doubles over and I’m hooked up. DOUBLE HOOKUP! Jed gets his fish to the boat first and it’s a 21″ redfish. I get my fish to the boat and its another redfish! Mine is bigger at about 25″. This was an AWESOME start to the tournament. In the first hour we had two of the three fish required for weigh in that were upper slot sized! Things were looking good. We just need a trout to qualify. I knew from this point on that it was not going to be easy to find a trout. The trout fishery is just not what it used to be in this area and I know everyone is going to take that for granted.

We knew we only had time to hit a couple more spots while the tide was good so we made a run south to one of Sean’s spots. Nothing. We made the run back up north to a hole in Hudson that we know only old guys fish for redfish. Sure enough, it was loaded with redfish. We got 4 more redfish… one beating mine at 26″. It was about 3am now and we desparately needed a trout. Luckily I landed a 16″ dinky sized trout at about 5am that would at least qualify us for weigh in. The tide was slacked and there wasn’t much we could do so we anchored up in the river, pitched a few baits, and pretty much took naps. Around 630am the sun started to come up. We were all re-energized. We only had about 6 more hours to fish. Chances of catching another snook or redfish that would beat what we already had was slim. The team decided that our biggest increase in weight would be a trout. So that’s what we set out for.

We called fellow anglers to see how they were doing and to see if we could get a tip on where the trout were at. It seemed that we were doing pretty well at that point since nobody else even had the slam (snook/redfish/trout). We got a tip to head south to Dunedin for some monster trout. None of us were familiar with the area and didn’t want to take the risk in wasting 40+ minutes driving each way. But we did run south to Three Rooker island and then to Anclote island and then to a deep hole I have marked off of the Anclote sandbar. There was only short grouper there but at least we were on the fish. We just needed to find the right depth now. We were in 14′ of water and headed inland to 10′. Nothing…. on to 8′. Nothing… on to 6′. We were running out of jig heads, plastic baits, and TIME! We killed jed’s supply of Gulp jerkbaits and the Gulp shrimp weren’t cutting it. Sean and I eventually switched to my DOA Cal jerbaits to cover more water, faster. I must’ve had 6 or 7 different colors and one by one I went through them to see which one the trout liked that day. Jed eventually gave up on the Gulp Shrimp and asked me for a DOA. I remembered that I had one reserve pack of a special color left in my bag so i threw it at Jed. He freaks out and says OMG THIS IS MY FAVORITE COLOR! It was Avocado Red Glitter. Jed rigs one up and casts it out. BAM! 21″ trout! Not only did we improve our trout weight but we now had a very respectable trout that we knew we would be key to us possibly winning. We fished a little bit longer and the Avocado Red Glitter proved to be the sure thing for trout. We landed several more trout up to 18″ and called it a day. We got to weigh in a full hour early just to relax and get some lunch.

Alot of really nice boats that I didn’t see at the captains meeting had showed up. It’s pretty intimidating seeing those boats in the same tournament as you. It’s also pretty obvious that those guys are professional guides that are nationally sponsored. All in all there were something like 25 teams in the tournament. Only 6 qualified for weigh in! That trout really did mess eveyrone up! We had weighed in at 16.7lbs… putting us in 2nd place so far. The team just before us had an even 18lbs. The next team weighed in at 15lbs or some and THEN WE WON 2ND PLACE!!!!!! That trout really proved to be the key since it beat out every other trout by almost 2lbs!!!

Left: Me driving with my Tarpon mask and Team WayFar shirt on.
Right: Fish or Die!

Jed and Sean with our prized Snook

It’s been a busy week. The makeup artist i worked with last week needed about 40 images touched up ASAP for her new portfolio. We talked about that way back when we were planning the shoot so I was expecting it. It took me about an hour to touch up each image to a satisfactory amount. I can’t imagine how long it would’ve taken if I didn’t have my Wacom tablet. I don’t think I would ever want to intensely process beauty shots again without a tablet. Anyways… editing an image is two major processes for me…. Post Processing and Touch Up.

Post Processing includes correcting the photo as a whole. That means cropping and adjusting things such as exposure, white balance, contrast, hue/saturation etc.

Touch Up involves making the model look flawless. That usually starts with removing all blemishes from the skin, lifting shadows under the eyelids/nose/lips, evening out skin tones, accentuating cheek bones, making peoples’ heads skinnier, pulling their ears closer to their heads and so on and so on. The list doesn’t end for making someone look “ideal”.

Here’s a before & after example:

It’s really not that hard but its very tedious. The hardest part is keeping the texture of the skin intact without making it look like plastic. Just look in Maxim or FHM for an example of a model that’s been airbrushed to look like a plastic doll.

This is one of my favorite images from last week. Everything really came together here. The model was great, her wardrobe was awesome, and the location really worked for it all. I knew right away, before even having taken any shots yet, that the images would have a nice print feel to them. You know that sales catalog or magazine ad look? When it came time to process these images, I didn’t want to change anything. I wanted to preserve how good it looked right out of the camera. I basically only pulled the contrast back to soften up the image overall. I look back at my old photos all the time and try to notice my own trends. I noticed that I liked really contrasty images so I started pulling that back and experimenting. It really works for this image.

It seems like so many people are over processing images now that I’ve grown to appreciate keeping things really simple. I got really sick of looking at photos that have been cross processed for that old vintage film look. I admit, I used to do it myself, and i was a big fan of it, but i feel like its time to move on. There’s some really great photographers on the west coast that got into this trend. I really feel like its hurt their work. I would much rather see your image as it was shot than after you’ve made it all purple and blue.

For the past three days I’ve been collaborating with a single great makeup artist, three hairstylists, a couple wardrobe stylists, and 11 different models. Each day’s shoot lasted 6-7 hours. I’ll admit that I was pretty nervous the first day. But after each shoot, my confidence grew and my creativity was pushed to its limits.

We worked in a small living room that was only long enough for my 85mm to get upper body shots. I brought my background stands and a 9′ x 8′ muslin cloth, my 2 alienbees (b1600 and abr800) and my elinchrom dlite2 kit. The biggest challenge was keeping the lighting interesting for each models look. Wardrobe, hair, makeup as well as the model’s attitude all contributed to how I wanted to light each model. It became a challenge as to whether i wanted to focus on the hair or the makeup (tight headshots came easiest because of the size of the room). I was armed with a 70-200L 2.8 IS that I borrowed from my friend Quan (www.blu-e-motion.com).

By the end of today, I had taken almost 1500 shots. I’ve culled that down to 46 shots i really like. I hope to cull that down even more to 15 or so. Here’s one of the best images from the first day of shooting.

I met Erica a couple weeks ago and she wanted to shoot with an old wedding dress what was passed down to her from her mom who also received it from her mom (Erica’s grandmother). Erica is pretty goth and wanted to stick that dark and edgy kind of look. She liked my style because i’m not real heavy on the post processing (it just doesn’t look heavy at least) and because she thought i could offer her the same feel she was looking for without the typical dark/grungy/goth look. My first thought was a “twisted” Alice in Wonderland theme. I spent over a week running through ideas but none were that great. One day I was driving and was reminded of the old ghost stories people used to tell at the Skyway fishing piers. They were always about some girl in a white dress. That girl in the white dress became the concept for this shoot.

I’d like to think that the first shot pays homage to the great Philippe Halsman… pioneer of the “jump portrait”. Nothing special going on in the shot to make her float. All Erica did was jump… many times… over and over again… until the pose was right.

my power pack blew out during some lighting tests the night before this shoot. unforunately, i didn’t know that it wasn’t working until we were already on location. so i shot the entired day with no flash… just natural light (and a little bit of photoshop). i’m pretty happy with my editing… here are the same shots before processing in photoshop and lightroom.

one thing i’d like to mention is that Alienbees (Paul C. Buff) has AMAZING customer service. once the shoot with Erica was over, i called customer service to see if we could trouble shoot the problem with my Vagabond II power pack. The tech person not in that day so I had to wait until the next morning to try again. I let them know that it was an emergency because I needed the pack for shoots next week and they forwarded my problem to the tech. I spoke to Joe (the tech) the next morning and told him the problem and that i’m pressed for time. He shipped me a loaner unit that day so I’ll have it an entire day before my shoot. Then i just return my unit for warranty work in the box that the loaner came in. When i get mine back in working order, we swap again! No downtime! I’m impressed.

I feel like i’m on a streak of good work right now so I’m trying to schedule as many photoshoots as I can to keep the momentum going. I learned some valuable lessons during my last shoot and I vowed not to make those same mistakes again. I kept things much simpler this time around and put my trust in my gear that i KNEW i could count on… just one lens (85mm f/1.8) and one light (AB1600 with beauty dish) did the job.

In my never ending search for new models, I found Victoria. I contacted her and three days later we were shooting. She wanted to do a vintage inspired shoot since she has alot of that kind of wardrobe and accessories. She’s also moving to Tennessee this Saturday so I decided to let her choose a location that might be meaningful to her. We ended up on a dirt road in Weeki Wachee that was actually familiar to me. At the corner of this street was the Bayport Inn (i shot a photo of it for the 2009 HPH Hospice calendar). Victoria was very well prepared and enthusiastic for this shoot. We lucked out with the weather and the storms cleared for the entire shoot.

Here’s a preview of the series… more images to come!

here are some shots from a session on friday afternoon. the concept was supposed to be good vs evil… but after shooting and editing, i decided that the concept needed to good AND evil (because the pictures really just reflect “good” and “evil” just hanging out… nothing really shows any kind of conflict between the two… just some hard feelings or jealousy). i was worried about the weather that day but it turned out to be perfect. my only problem was not having an assistant to help me carry the equipment around and i was literally exhausted by the end of the shoot. moving from spot to spot, i was lugging around 2 lights with stands, a battery pack, camera bag, and 2 other gear bags.

i have to admit that i was real nervous about this shoot. i felt unprepared and out of my league. on my way to the shoot, i kept thinking that i should’ve planned this better. i should’ve made a more concise shot list. i should’ve done this and i should’ve done that to prepare. i was starting to make myself panic. as i started to drive over some bridges through Tampa Bay, i tried calming myself down by remember that i’m actually pretty good at doing the best with what i’ve got to work with. i recalled talking to Tom Epperson in the Philippines and asking him, “what do i shoot when i don’t even know what looks good anymore?” He told me to just shoot WHATEVER I WANT to shoot. I kept that in my head all day and all worries of me not producing quality images went away. i gave this shoot 100% effort. i convinced myself to be happy with only three quality images by the end… i definitely got at least that many.

I’m doing pretty good as far as keeping on the move. I got back from the Philippines 5 weeks ago and I’m already on another trip. This time its to Reno and Lake Tahoe for a wedding. Here are a few shots from the rehearsal dinner on Lake Tahoe yesterday. All shot with my 17-40L.