Vintage Little Girl (With LR3)

Bryce Wilson

First session I've done completely in Lightroom 3. I really like the fact that you can automatically apply adjustments to all images in a set. What a time saver. Haven't figured out how to use the healing tool yet, it's rather confusing to me, but baby steps and I'll get it figured out.

Here are a few results trying to replicate the look I get from my lab.

1

Vintage Little Girl On The Phone by Bryce Wilson, on Flickr

2.

Vintage Little Girl Out And About by Bryce Wilson, on Flickr

3

Vintage Little Girl Headshot by Bryce Wilson, on Flickr

divamum

That last one - SCORE! SCORE! SCORE!! That is just the most WONDERFUL expression!

Having never seen your lab stuff don't know if it's comparable, but they are nicely processed and look great to me.

I'm not a huge fan of the clone/heal tool in LR for anything other than minor adjustments. Do try both clone and heal - I sometimes find one or the other works better. I usually take the image into PS for any significant cloning, however. You can use the adjustment brush with reduced clarity for minor skin softening, by the way - it's not a full skin retouch, but for kids and those with good skin to start with it's sometimes just enough to soften it.

ETA Re clone/heal tool: click on area you want to change - circle appears. Second circle then appears - move 2nd circle around until you like the way area in first circle looks. Adjust opacity to suit Toggle off and on (little gray button/box at upper lh corner of the panel of whatever section you're working in) to see if you like it overall. Again, I only find it useful for minor retouches and/or retouches in very busy areas (grass, for instance), but it can be helpful not to go into PS for every tiny little thing.

Hackbone

Bryce, your starting to do some really awesome work!!!!! Great skin tones on the black child. I and they just hate it when they go orange.

Cowboydoug

I agree with Diva & Charles...
here's a thought for you... throw some Gaussian blur on that little darlin in 1 & 2.... maybe even all three... back in the day I used to use Harrison & Harrison filters on my Hasselblad lenses to soften the image... Not being a PS expert i am guessing about the gaussian but i think a layer of that would be awesome...
Have you shot this little girl before?

Mike J

I really really like what you are doing with these vintage shots. Your attention to detail and props is really setting these apart. Where do you find all of this stuff?

Bryce Wilson

divamum wrote: »

That last one - SCORE! SCORE! SCORE!! That is just the most WONDERFUL expression!

Having never seen your lab stuff don't know if it's comparable, but they are nicely processed and look great to me.

I'm not a huge fan of the clone/heal tool in LR for anything other than minor adjustments. Do try both clone and heal - I sometimes find one or the other works better. I usually take the image into PS for any significant cloning, however. You can use the adjustment brush with reduced clarity for minor skin softening, by the way - it's not a full skin retouch, but for kids and those with good skin to start with it's sometimes just enough to soften it.

ETA Re clone/heal tool: click on area you want to change - circle appears. Second circle then appears - move 2nd circle around until you like the way area in first circle looks. Adjust opacity to suit Toggle off and on (little gray button/box at upper lh corner of the panel of whatever section you're working in) to see if you like it overall. Again, I only find it useful for minor retouches and/or retouches in very busy areas (grass, for instance), but it can be helpful not to go into PS for every tiny little thing.

Thanks for the tips on the healing tool! That saved me a WHOLE bunch of time.

This look isn't quite the same as I'm getting in the finished prints but it's a reasonable facsimile. The actual prints capture the vintage look much better, but these are good enough to proof with as long as there are print samples near by. I'm going to check out some of those pre-sets you told me about earlier and see if there is one that may do the trick.

Hackbone wrote: »

Bryce, your starting to do some really awesome work!!!!! Great skin tones on the black child. I and they just hate it when they go orange.

Thanks Charles! And I do see a lot of "orange black folks" coming out of the "retail photographers" in my area. I was guilty of the same until you and others pointed it out in one of my posts several months ago. Simple solution I found is when all else fails on ebony skin, reduce the saturation a tad as was done to these.

Cowboydoug wrote: »

I agree with Diva & Charles...
here's a thought for you... throw some Gaussian blur on that little darlin in 1 & 2.... maybe even all three... back in the day I used to use Harrison & Harrison filters on my Hasselblad lenses to soften the image... Not being a PS expert i am guessing about the gaussian but i think a layer of that would be awesome...
Have you shot this little girl before?

Thanks Doug!

I do like the slightly soft look a filter gives on the vintage work. But, my goal also is to be able to have images ready to print and view on web SOC without any post work. For a while I was using a piece of panty hose stretched over the lens and liked it, but others complained about the images being soft. Especially on the extreme close ups in the eye area.

I had not photographed this little girl before. Her mother was referred to me by a former client.

Mike J wrote: »

I really really like what you are doing with these vintage shots. Your attention to detail and props is really setting these apart. Where do you find all of this stuff?

Why thank-you Mike.

I visit flea markets, second hand shops, craft malls, etc. Most of the wardrobe I use for boys is purchased used at second hand shops although bib overalls are getting rather hard to find, for girls dresses and hats there are several places online that have them at rather inexpensive prices.

Bryce Wilson

For Diva:

This is almost exactly the look I get from the lab. Of course, I spent an hour screwing around in photoshop to get it and certainly can't do that with every image. It was all trial and error so of course I don't have an action of it.

Oh to find a pre-set.


Baby Boy - Little Executive by Bryce Wilson, on Flickr

Icebear

Oh, that BG again. Bryce I love that thing! You're a genius.

Hackbone

Bryce, I think you found a niche that you can clean up on in your area!!! Do you have a Facebook page and do you have the new timeline page? These would make a great page for advertising. Friend me on Facebook and you can see the page I did for my business.

Gotham

#3 is gorgeous. The others are too prop-filled for my taste, but they're still very well done. The tones are beautiful.

Nikolai

Great work!

divamum

Hey Charles! Hope you don't mind, but I dug you out on FB too (the Camera One page, which I "liked" - is that the one you meant?)

Hackbone

Diva make me a friend Charles Bilconish and you can see what I'll talking about. Great for advertising. I have a facebook page then added a business page. I'm trying to get most of the folks to the Charles Bilconish page for my work.

divamum

Sent you a PM - having trouble finding you.

To echo what CHarles is saying, however, I have been getting LOADS of enquiries since I started posting teasers from shoots to Facebook (I've set up a blog to link, but I usually post a "sneak peek" as well). My opera friends see the shoots their friends have done with me, and it really does grow exponentially outside my own immediate circle. While I have no interest in doing this full time at this point, I'm actually getting more enquiries than I can currently find dates for, so it's definitely getting the word around. Granted, mine is very "niche", and my f-list is already targeting the people I would want to reach anyway, but I have to admit I've been impressed how much interest it has generated

Bryce Wilson

As Diva mentioned, a Facebook search for you doesn't show anyone by that name.