Lost in the Woods

Now on to the photos. I will try and walk you through before and after (before and after Photoshop). Lightroom is my main tool of choice and all of the before photos were brought into Lightroom for minor tweaks. (Click on the photos to make them larger).

Lightroom – ISO 100, 135mm, f2.8, 1/250sec
As shot except for some Vignette (darkening) to the corners.



Lightroom – Same photo except converted to black and white.



Lightroom – ISO 100, 78mm, f3.0, 1/160sec
As shot except for some Vignette (darkening) to the corners. You can see where the flash to the front and one from the back really make the subject stand out.



Photoshop – Same photo but added a little “Hollywood”. (In future posts, I will show you how to use this technique).



These next shots, I’m not going to bother you with the before. Just the final shot…

Lightroom – ISO 100, 70mm, f3.8, 1/4sec
Converted to black and white and added the contrast.



Lightroom – ISO 100, 70mm, f5.3, 1/250sec
Single flash bounced from the umbrella. Desaturated the color and bumped up the contrast.



Lightroom – ISO 100, 58mm, f5.0, 1/250sec
Same as photo before with a little more color



Lightroom – ISO 100, 70mm, f2.8, 1/250sec
As shot except for some Vignette (darkening) to the corners. I just liked the soft background.



Lightroom – ISO 100, 98mm, f2.8, 1/250sec
Can you tell we are having a little fun :-)



Lightroom / Photoshop – ISO 100, 70mm, f2.8, 1/250sec
Same as the photo before this but I cropped in to catch the nice smile. I had to jump into Photoshop to remove part of the arm from the subject in the back.



Lightroom / Photoshop – ISO 100, 70mm, f2.8, 1/250sec
Same as the photo before this but converted to black and white with a little Vignette again.



Lightroom / Photoshop – ISO 100, 120mm, f2.8, 1/250sec
The next four photos are a progression. Started with the natural shot and then went to Hollywood, then color saturation and then color saturation with a different crop.









Lightroom / Photoshop – ISO 100, 150mm, f2.8, 1/250sec
The next three photos are a progression also. The green moss background really complimented her eyes.

Lost in the Woods -Behind the Scenes

Good morning everyone,

Had a great shoot yesterday down by a river. Thought I would post the “how to” first. We used two SB800 flash heads. One on the right (held by my lovely assistant) was bounced from a white umbrella. The other, in the upper left was direct flash to the back of the subjects. I was going for a hard light kind of look but you do have options in these types of shoots. If you want to soften the subjects a little more, turn the umbrella stand around and shoot the flash directly through the umbrella. With the back light, you can put a cone around the flash and direct it straight at the subject’s heads as a “hair light”.



I used my Nikon D2X with my 70-200mm lens. Most of the shots were taken from about 20 to 30 feet away, at a high shutter speed so I could blur the foreground and back ground a bit. I will talk more about the settings when I post follow up photos.