The making of a fine art nude

Back in the fall of 2010 I spent a weekend shooting lingerie, shibari and fine art nudes with four different models at the Hazelton Hotel.  Most of the shooting was done with a Phase One P65+ and Phase One DF with profoto strobes and a variety of light modifiers.  But a few days before the shoot, after a long wait, my Arca Swiss M-Monolith view camera arrived.  I just had to unpack it, set it up and give it a go.

Since a view camera is a slow, contemplative tool, it is not suited to shooting fashion, glamour, or most of what I was doing that weekend.  But shooting artistic nudes?  Sure, why not?  I set up the Arca in the living room and framed the camera on the doors to the balcony of the suite before the model arrived.  This gave me time to focus the camera and set up the framing.  When the model arrived, I merely showed her where I wanted to photograph her.

The model, (Erin), was a very experienced nude model, and is herself an artist.  She was perfect.  Not only was her body beautifully proportioned, she knew how to pose fabulously creating interesting lines within the frame.

The problem with the world is that the dynamic range (the range of light and shadows) can sometimes be far beyond the dynamic range of film or a digital sensor.  The P65+ I paired with the Arca Swiss has about as good a dynamic range as one can get now, but the scene I was capturing every time I pressed the cable release did extend beyond that which could be captured by a single exposure.   And given that it was my first shoot with the Arca, I had forgotten to bring a sync cable to use fill flash to balance the internal light with the more powerful sunlight coming through the balcony.  Consequently, the raw capture was exposed perfectly (or at least as I wanted it) for the model, missed the shadows inside the room, and was blown out in the highlights outside.

But, processing the raw files three times (as captured, pushed two stops, and pulled two stops) in Capture One Pro, layering the files and masking selected portions of each of the three layers reveals enough of the shadows inside the room, and retains the highlight detail outside.  Here is one of those shots, at pulled two stops, as shot, and pushed two stops.

Clearly, the image as captured was just fine, but not fine art; there are details in the shadows of the drapes that I wanted to recover, and the outside buildings are pretty blown out.  The image underexposed by two stops reveals the details in the buildings outside the room but blocks up the shadows in Erin’s body a bit too much for my liking.  And the image overexposed by two stops reveals the details in the drapes, while totally blowing out large areas of the background and balcony.

Layering these images, masking out the portions that are undesirable produces an image that I am pleased with:  the folds in the drapes are present but not distracting;  there is some detail in the background buildings above the steam; and Erin’s beautiful pose is the centrepiece.

Erin, artistic nude at the Hazelton Hotel. Arca Swiss M Monolith, Schneider Kreuznach Apo Digitar 72mm @ f8 for 0.5 seconds, P65+ digital back @ ISO 50; three layer TIFF files from a single capture to extend dynamic range.

Zoomify – how to share high resolution digital images

Zoomify is a gem of a program that helps you share super-high resolution images with clients.  Portraits, glamour, boudoir, and maternity type images do not require high resolution proofs.  But some of my clients have products or artwork in which high resolution proofs are ideal, but too big for email.

I stumbled upon a zoomify (http://www.zoomify.com/), which has free and paid versions and, surprise surprise, is built into photoshop CS5.

Take for example an image I shot for a local Hamilton artist.  The original shot

• is 60.5 megapixels and was shot on a Phase One P65+ digital back with
• the Mamiya 120mm digital macro lens in my studio, and
• was lit with two 1×4 foot profoto strip softboxes angled so that there would be no direct reflections from the metal in the cell phone, and the light would be even over the painting.

The small email version is nice, but it is difficult to evaluate.  Now check out the “zoomified image” by clicking on the link below and, go ahead, zoom in. You can see the paint strokes and the texture of the canvas.  He has a cell phone in the sky.  You can read the individual letters on the chips.

Theo Koutalos Mixed Media painting

Zoomify is an incredibly easy and efficient way to share super high resolution images with clients.  I love it.  So did Theo.  This was the first painting I shot for him.  He is bringing 25 more.

Fun with Lego and an Arca Swiss View Camera

My son Paul is seven years old and is at that stage where he loves working with Lego.  So I got to thinking:  could I make an image that he would love based on one of his Lego projects?  Here is the result:

Fun with Lego

Here is how it was done:

1. First, the star fighter was placed on black velvet on a still life shooting table,
2. Two strobes were set up, one with a a standard reflector and barn doors as a key light to camera right, and an umbrella that was barely open to camera right to act as fill.
3. The image was captured using an Arca Swiss M-Monolith view camera utilizing lens tilt to ensure that the plane of sharp focus extended across both wings of the star fighter.  The lens was a Schneider Kreuznach APO digitar 120 macro lens particularly designed for up close capture.
4. The stars were created using a simple technique in photoshop:  add monochromatic gaussian noise with the noise filter, and then push the black point up dramatically and lower the white point marginally with a levels adjustment layer, and then mask out the stars so that they were only around the starfigher.
5. Duplicate only the star fighter (not the black velvet surrounding it) and add motion blur to this layer in the direction of travel.
6. Offset the blur layer so that it falls primarily behind the star figher, and then mask this blur with a gradient so that the intensity of the blur is zero at the front of the figher, and higher behind.
7. Mask out the blur around the cockpit.
8. Select the engine turbines (I guess that is what they are called) and add rotational blur to give a sense of them spinning as they project this killer craft through space.

There you have it.  Fun with Lego.  Paul was duly impressed.

Still Life – Table, sculptures, clay and a girl

One of my favourite images from last year is the “Geyer Studio Still Life”.  Shot purely for self promotion and my portfolio, this is one of my favourite images from 2010.  Here is how it was done:

I placed the camera (a Phase One DF with P65+ digital back) on a gamma studio stand, set up the lights and shot the two sculptures shown placed on a table with a removable glass top.  Then the sculptures and the glass top were removed, and my model April was covered in clay and posed in the same scene.  Because the camera and lights did not move, it is relatively simple to layer the two images and mask out the rest of her body.  To create a realistic chiselled edge, dodging and burning and a little clone stamp around the edges, and voila:  A still life.

Here are the two images that were composited and the final product.

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The final step was to bring the colours together, so I sampled the colour of the sculpture and applied a hue overlay to make the clay on her body more closely resemble the clay of the sculptures.  This also turned the green edge of the glass a clayish brown, and so it all hangs together.