Tim Burton meets Tony Hawk

schmoo

I had a really great time shooting this young model yesterday. I've never worked with a model who had significant experience before so I was kind of apprehensive, but he was so personable, polite, professional, and just all-around a good guy and so easy to work with. One hour turned into four and it was more like hangin' with friends than a shoot.

Not only a model, he's an accomplished skateboarder. And he wanted something Tim Burton-esque, so what better than gnarled trees and stripes?



I have to get working on processing the rest of these, but this one (the very last take of the day) I just had to grab first. More to come.

Thanks for looking!

catspaw

I cannot wait to see the rest of these

Richard

Hah! Great shot, Steph. The tree is reminiscent of Burton, but maybe needs to be a little darker and spookier to really get the effect.

Hackbone

Very cool!!

marlof

As a Burton fan, I really like this image. I can see how some post processing would make it even more Burtonesque. Somehow the two oranges marks in the sole of his left shoe bother me a tiny bit, since they take away from the black and white theme in the person. But anyhow, a lovely shot!

Nikolai

Great stuff, Steph!

schmoo

Thanks for the comments! Richard and marlof - any suggestions on changing the PP? I'm not too experienced in doing anything more heavy-handed than some curves tweaking so if you (or anyone) have ideas I'm all ears

Angelo

schmoolicious!!!!

kinda reminds me of:

careful - not work safe - nude on board

Llywellyn

Very cool!

Burton brings to mind two processing styles in my head: bright and poppy (a la Willy Wonka) or cool and dark (a la Sleepy Hollow/Sweeney Todd). Yes, I'm a total Depp fangirl...

I think your image is more the bright-and-poppy-but-twisted-Beetlejuice phase, so I'd suggested a slight warming filter and darkening of the background (perhaps saturating that tree, too) to make your model really jump out from the image.

Can't wait to see the rest!

Richard

Angelo wrote:

schmoolicious!!!!

kinda reminds me of:

careful - not work safe - nude on board

Ang: That's a great pic...I hadn't seen it before.

Schmoo: I don't have ready access to any Burton films right now, so I am relying on memory--a dicey proposition. Dark and spooky is what you need, but you can't let the subject become too dark, so you would need to do some masking. I would start with a vignette to darken the edges and a curve layer to reduce the overall brightness. Then maybe try duplicating the background and putting it in color burn mode. You might need to desaturate it after that. If you could do a rough selection of the tree branches and give them an outer-glow layer style, that might lend some spookiness.

On the other hand, it's a great shot as is, so I don't know that it would really be worth all the hassle--especially if you have more great shots from the same session to work on.

Edit: I was writing while Kerry was posting. As you can see, I'm more a fan of the dark ones, but she's correct that the brighter style might be more suited to this one.

divamum

clap Fabulous image! Can't wait to see the rest of the shoot, and where your further adventures in post processing will take you. Wonderful stuff!

Ann McRae

WOW, steph!

Great shot. And great direction for you - how cool is that?!

Agnieszka

Ohhhhh , fabuloso!!! I wanna see the rest!!!

ivar

I like it very much, schmoo!

Even though the background has a lot of light patches, and his clothes have a lot of light/white areas, he still stands out nicely. Nice job on the (manual) focus

As far as PP, maybe bring the grey on his clothes a bit more to black, but only a tad. Other than that, I don't think I would do anything to it. I like the lighter/cheery style on this.

Looks like a fun day with a great result

schmoo wrote:

I have to get working on processing the rest of these, but this one (the very last take of the day) I just had to grab first. More to come.

For me I find that it's usually the last or the first shot of the day that works.

marlof

schmoo wrote:

Richard and marlof - any suggestions on changing the PP?

Not that I'm any good at PP.... You might want to try to darken the top of the trees to get a more moody atmosphere. This could probably be done with a NG filter, as found in Lightroom. Then, you can do a local exposure/brightness adjustment on the model, lightning it up again. Upping the blacks a bit will make him (and the umbrella) stand out more against the tree. But it's a matter of taste, really. It's a lovely picture as is.

saurora

I would adore this shot even if I wasn't such a huge Tim Burton fan! This rocks! What was your lighting setup? Looks super as is, but begs to be played around with. Would like to see the model pop out more from the trees. What fun!

schmoo

marlof wrote:

You might want to try to darken the top of the trees to get a more moody atmosphere. This could probably be done with a NG filter, as found in Lightroom. Then, you can do a local exposure/brightness adjustment on the model, lightning it up again. Upping the blacks a bit will make him (and the umbrella) stand out more against the tree. But it's a matter of taste, really. It's a lovely picture as is.

I actually did just that in my processing of this shot! I had about 6-10 curves adjustment layers (I can't remember off the top of my head now, a week and a half later), darkening the bg and treating it differently than the fg. Sounds like I could have pushed it even more, though. Thanks for the suggestions!

saurora wrote:

I would adore this shot even if I wasn't such a huge Tim Burton fan! This rocks! What was your lighting setup? Looks super as is, but begs to be played around with. Would like to see the model pop out more from the trees. What fun!

Thanks so much Saurora! I agree it's a busy shot that is a bit bright but I was actually going for a sort of skateboarding ad kind of look, twisted with him, well, not having a skateboard and being in a Beetlejuice getup. (A lot of his past modeling was for skateboarding companies)

I had my strobe set up at camera right to fire through a white umbrella at the apex of his jump. The sun was coming from camera left-ish to help illuminate the side. That's pretty much it. And then he climbed and jumped out of the tree 20 or 30 times until we got it right.