How he do it?

Mnemosyne

So, a friend of mine from high school is a photographer. And I was browsing his blog, and wanted to figure out how he does his photos. There is something about them I can't figure out.

http://kurtisb.wordpress.com/

Through his whole blog it's a style he seems to stick with (except for the flash stuff). Is he exposing for the shadows/midtones, and blowing out the highlights? Is it all PS? Or is it something in the camera setting? Cause I like to think I have improved immensely since my dad made the mistake of buying me my first camera, but I can't seem to make my photos look that good.

My photos never seem to look that smooth. Maybe I have my contrast/saturation in my color profiles too high still?

ziggy53

Mnemosyne wrote:

So, a friend of mine from high school is a photographer. And I was browsing his blog, and wanted to figure out how he does his photos. There is something about them I can't figure out.

http://kurtisb.wordpress.com/

Through his whole blog it's a style he seems to stick with (except for the flash stuff). Is he exposing for the shadows/midtones, and blowing out the highlights? Is it all PS? Or is it something in the camera setting? Cause I like to think I have improved immensely since my dad made the mistake of buying me my first camera, but I can't seem to make my photos look that good.

My photos never seem to look that smooth. Maybe I have my contrast/saturation in my color profiles too high still?

I suspect that a lot of the outdoor stuff, especially the "under the pier" shots, is intentionally slightly overexposed and then a curve is applied to push just the very highest highlights over the edge into pure white and then maybe some cleanup of clouds, just to create a simpler background of pure white. He may even have an action created to do the heavy work and get some consistancy. He may also be setting the white-point further in than normal. Without seeing an original capture with no real manipulation it's hard to know for sure.

I'm not sure it always works, but it looks like it has some merit and is probably worth learning. Since you call him a friend, is it possible to just ask him how he does it? Maybe even invite him here to share the technique?

Cygnus Studios

Definitely metering for the darkest areas of the image. There are a few images where the faces are overexposed as well as the sky. If you look at some of the focus points you can see where he is metering.

Tim Kamppinen

Looks like the basic technique is just exposing for the faces which causes the sky and much of the background to be overexposed. There's probably some post work, maybe to bring back some contrast but it's mostly in camera from what I can tell.

One way to do this would be to put your camera in manual mode and switch to spot metering. Pick whatever aperture you want to shoot at (based on the depth of field you need/want) and look through the viewfinder. Point your active focus point at your subject's face and look at the meter display at the bottom of the viewfinder. Now adjust your shutter speed until the subject's face is metered the way you want it. If you set the "correct" exposure the skin will be at 18% or "middle" gray in terms of lightness. So you'll probably want to adjust the shutter speed until the meter says that you're between 1 and 2 stops overexposed (you can experiment to see what looks good to you). Since you're in manual mode your exposure will stay where you set it, metered for the skin tones, and you're free to recompose the shot, switch focus points, etc.

This method works pretty well if you're not worried about blowing out the sky, etc. The only thing that might give you problems is if the backlighting is very strong and you begin to get blown highlights on the edges of your subject's face or in their hair. Even then it's an artistic decision as to whether it's acceptable to you or not. If not then you'll have to either find a spot with different light or start adding in some flash to balance things out. I used to be really anal about blowing highlights but more an more I like the light, airy feel of this type of natural light shooting and I'm experimenting with it more.

EDIT: Just a little addendum, in these shots he's shooting mostly under the pier, which is why the blown highlights on the edges of the subjects aren't an issue for the most part. The subjects are totally in the shade for most of the shots. If you look at the ones that do have blown highlights on the hair and sides of the face, you can see that they appear to be off to the edges of the pier, and apparently are getting some direct sunlight on the backs and sides of their heads.

Mnemosyne

I only shoot manual and spot I tend to do a lot of lowlight shooting, and have found that since I don't have the luxury of changing my ISO and aperture, I just use spot and meter off the brightest point. So I guess if I just start doing the exact opposite, I can achieve that look.

Thanks