Friday, November 26, 2010

Meg HDR Portrait Test #1


In the early 1970's I worked for a time at Todd Studios in St. Louis.  Part of my job was to fill print orders from a massive library of glass plate negatives.  The experience as amazing, not just because of the invaluable hands on experience, but because I was working in a sort of time bubble using equipment that was state of the art in 1920.  One thing I took away was Todd's imaginative lighting, which had that beautiful hard/soft Steichen feel.

Over the years, commercial lighting style got very flat, epitomized by room sized banks and the ring flash.  The flat light is fast and easy, making it perfect for high volume catalog work.  It has been on my mind to do a series of portraits and figures that have that Roaring Twenties feel.

This picture is a detail from an improvised sitting with Meg last Friday.  Meg very patiently sat rock solid still for a five exposure brackets and three position panorama.  The bracket shots were processed in Nik HDR Efex and the panorama stitched in Photoshop CS5.  I used Lightroom 3 to make the monochrome conversion and apply a sepia with blue shadows split tone to emulate Kodak Printing Out Paper that we used at Todd Studios.

Camera: Nikon D700

Lens: AF Micro-Nikkor 105mm f2.8 D
Exposure: ISO 200, f/8.0 @ 1/6s x five 1-stop brackets
Support: Gitzo Basalt tripod, Acratech GB Ball head, leveling base and nodal rail, RRS L-bracket
Lighting: Single Calumet Quattro daylight fluorescent from behind, strip mirror to fill
Location: Grand Center Artist Studios GPS
Dates: Capture - November 19, 2010, Processed - November 26, 2010
Processing: RAW in Lightroom 3, Photoshop CS5, Nik Silver Efex Pro

No comments: