Trying my own "Dragan" Technique

p27rpy

Here's my attempt at the much talked about Dragan technique. i am fixing the background at the moment, but i just wanted to see what yall thought about it so far.
comments welcome!
theo

ShepsMom

Very cool, da man is glowing!

LiquidAir

The texture of the hair and beard are cool. The skin tones, however, don't work for me. He looks seriously sunburned with dark red rough skin in places and more polished pink skin in others. Cutting down on the magenta and boosting the yellow in his face is a good starting point. Beyond that, maybe some of your sharpening passes blew out? I dunno quite what happened but you have several sizes of very visible and somewhat odd sharpening halos in the skin tones. It is possible you need to protect his face from some of the sharpening passes.

gmonkeh

Dragan style has some contrast to it and fine definition on the face. Here's my try at it. Nothing spectacular but I think it came out kind of cool.

Mike02

I think its kindof cool, but it looks really fake, especially the skin's tones- they look waay too red, I'd suggest working on that first, and then fixing the background :P.

gpphotos

i'd use this if i was aiming for some sort of artistic statement or looking to get a specific result from a photo, but i wouldnt use this for portraits...it seems really out of place. an artsy photo of homeless person on the street maybe, but not your standard family portraits or headshot (unless the customer asks for it specifically)

p27rpy

tried to get rid of the redness. i included the original pic so you can see the difference. what do yall think about this one?
(still no fix on the background yet, just left it, haha.)

LiquidAir

Wow, the original is quite red. How was this shot lit?

I like the new color better. Its now looking like almost like a sepia tone. The shadows are now what is bothering me most. The shadows around the eyes are extremely dark and has swallowed up his eyebrows. The shadows around the nose and around the hairline also look very dark.

p27rpy

LiquidAir wrote:

Wow, the original is quite red. How was this shot lit?

I like the new color better. Its now looking like almost like a sepia tone. The shadows are now what is bothering me most. The shadows around the eyes are extremely dark and has swallowed up his eyebrows. The shadows around the nose and around the hairline also look very dark.

it was lit with an SB600 bounced off the ceiling, but the walls on either side of him were red, so that might have attributed to it. maybe i didnt change the white balance settings either, im not sure. either way, yes the original is pretty red.

about the shadows, yes they do obscure some things, but i like it. i wish i had a more serious picture, because it fits the "mood" better with the dark contrast and desaturated colors.

thanks for your great comments, though. you've helped a lot!

p27rpy

one more.... changing up a little bit

Mike02

p27rpy wrote:

tried to get rid of the redness. i included the original pic so you can see the difference. what do yall think about this one?
(still no fix on the background yet, just left it, haha.)

I think this looks alot better, although I still dont like the 'dreamyness', great job removing the reds .

P.S. dont like the last one... looks creepy a little bit.