Kevin Thom - Hamilton, Toronto, Ontario Photographer

Initially, Nico wasn't convinced that she wanted to participate in the photo shoot.

Most of the time, I try to get the shot right in the camera. I’ve never thought of myself as a Photoshop artist, although I use Photoshop on a daily basis for minor things like removing blemishes and adjusting color. However, sometimes an idea just calls out for a change to the “normal” policy.

Heidi came to me with the idea of doing some fun and slightly surreal portraits with her family. We would use some Photoshop tricks to make an unusual final image. The key was to convince the talent, her daughter Nico, to go along with the shoot. Nico’s a little bit camera shy. However, with the promise that she could dress up like a princess, and wear a little makeup, a deal was struck. We decided to shoot the photos with a “tea party” theme, to match the princess outfit. The final image was going to be Nico holding a teacup with her parents inside.

Because Nico needed a little bit of encouragement to warm up to the idea of being in front of the camera, we practiced by taking some pictures of Heidi and David. Not only did seeing Mom and Dad in their photos allow Nico to get more comfortable with the studio, but it also gave me the opportunity to practice some of the techniques we’d use to create the final composite image.

Eventually, with the aid of Heidi and David’s skillful persuasive skills, Nico felt comfortable enough to pose for her photo. She did a great job imagining she was holding her parents in the cup, and keeping her pinkie fingers out like a proper lady. Next, we photographed Mom and Dad. I put them against a light colored background so that it would be easier to blend them with Nico’s dress. I had them hold a sheet of cardboard in front of them on the same angle as the edge of the teacup in Nico’s photo, so that it would keep their hands in line and help the pose look  more natural.

Finally, we put it all together in Photoshop. I cut Heidi and David out of their background and dropped them into the photo of Nico. I used a layer mask to clip around the fingers as closely as possible. I used Photoshop’s puppet warp feature to adjust David’s arm a little so it looked like he was leaning on the edge of the cup. I duplicated Heidi and David’s layer, clicked on the “preserve transparency” button, and filled it with black. This created a silhouette of them, which I dropped underneath their original image layer. By applying a Gaussian blur and dropping its opacity down to about 20%, it created a shadow. I masked out all of this shadow except the areas around the fingertips. This added a little bit of depth to that transition between them and the cup. I also brought in a little bit of this shadow under David’s elbow, so it looked like he was casting a shadow on the right side of the cup. Next, I created another shadow layer, with even more Gaussian blur, and dropped it behind David and Heidi’s layer onto Nico’s dress. The higher level of blur implies a greater distance, and I found this improved the impression of depth. Finally, I used the blur tool to blur David and Heidi’s fingertips a little bit, so they’d match the slightly out-of-focus appearance of the edge of the cup.

The final image is pretty entertaining, I think, and is definitely not your average family portrait. Thanks to Heidi and David and Nico for helping me to create something a little different.

Bonus images

Here are the two “practice images” we shot to help warm Nico up to the idea.

For me, the ability to control depth of field–the area that’s in focus–has been essential. It’s a major tool in my toolbox when I go about isolating a subject in the frame. Some of the other tools include negative space, color, and contrast, both visual and thematic. Depth of field is my favorite though. That’s why I’ve invested in lenses that give me the widest possible range of aperture to work with, and spent a lot of time learning how to control it. The latest toy is this Hartblei 65mm f3.5 Super-Rotator that I’ve talked about a lot lately. I bought it because I knew that I could use it to create very unusual depth of field effects, but when it finally arrived from the Czech Republic, I had no idea how it worked.

Before I start using a new tool on clients, I normally do some experimentation to get a handle on its operation. Usually, this involves taking pictures of inanimate objects and doing self-portraits before actually showing anyone the results.

The photo above is one of those experiments that I did with the Hartblei. It took a lot of fiddling under pressure, because this kid was biking around like a maniac, and I really wanted to capture him in front of the car before he gave up the game and went to do something else. With the Hartblei’s nearly infinite combination of tilts, shifts and rotations, it did take a few tries to get this effect predictably. Fortunately, on the kid’s last pass, I got the shot. The area in focus is thrown diagonally from the foreground to the background, with other areas rendered in a very pleasant bokeh, which is just a fancy way of saying “out of focus.”

Getting this shot of the Flatiron Building in Manhattan was a little easier, because I had all the time in the world to mess around with the lens to get the right areas in focus.

After a great deal of experimentation and failed attempts, I finally felt ready to use this lens with a client, in the studio. The client is a musician, who is releasing an album in the next month or two. We needed to shoot some portraits to use in the CD liner notes. My goal with this particular shoot was to get a kind of low-contrast feel which I felt matched the melancholy mood of his music, as well as the cover art for the CD. I envisioned everything being a sort of monotone beige, with the clarity of his eyes being the most outstanding features of the image. The eyes would already be isolated because of color, but isolating them further with focus and shallow depth of field really adds a lot to the laid-back mood, I think.

It was pretty easy to accomplish this with the 50mm f1.2 lens when he was more or less face-front to the camera. The area of focus is at a constant distance from the back of the camera, producing a very traditional shallow depth of field effect.

However, he had a great profile, and I wanted to be able to shoot this angle without losing the focus that fell mainly on the eyes and not elsewhere. This is where the Hartblei really came in handy.

By bending the lens so that it threw the area of focus across the front of his face, even though I was facing the side of his face, I was able to keep his eyes isolated in focus, while the rest of him softly blended away.

I remember sitting with a friend years ago, marveling at a book of Karsh’s portraiture, admiring his masterful control of depth of field. At that time, I wondered how he achieved this effect. Now I know it’s because he was using a massive 8×10 view camera with bellows that allowed him to similarly throw focus onto whichever plane he wished. Those cameras were cumbersome and difficult to adjust. These days, with small SLR cameras, it’s possible to get similar results, but in a more spontaneous and casual fashion. I’m looking forward to using this new trick more often in the future.

I did a portrait shoot with Ana the other day, to take some photos for her personal use and for use as profile pictures on social networking sites. As with all of the portrait shoots I do, I try to get a versatile range of images to illustrate the many different but genuine sides of a person. She was nervous at first, but as she discovered, photo shoots can be lots of fun. Before we even finished this shoot, she was bubbling with excitement, already plotting what kinds of things to wear in her next shoot! I may have created a photo shoot addict…

The Soggy Cheerios blog, which focuses on the world of art and design, did a brief feature of my photo of Ron the Mountain Man. The title of the Soggy Cheerios feature was Father Time, and I admit I never even thought of that interpretation of the image! But, it does make sense in that I was trying to create a portrait that portrayed transition. The more I think about it, the more I like the Father Time interpretation. It’s a nice abstraction from my visual language. Anyway, I always enjoy seeing how someone else ingests my work and puts their own spin on it. Here’s a link to the feature. Have a look!

My Mountain Man portrait of actor Ron Kebic has been one of my favorite photos in my portfolio since I shot it two years ago. I still grin whenever I see this wild looking character staring back at me.

When Ron contacted me in September to ask if I’d like to do some more photos before he cut off all of his hair, I jumped at the chance. I knew this was an opportunity to do something really fun. I proposed that we do a Mountain Man Makeover. I would take Ron to my barber, cut off half of his hair, and do bizarre portrait like that. Ron was game for it, and was good enough to wait for me to return from China so we could set everything up.

We shot these portraits today. When Ron showed up at my door, I was shocked to see that his hair and beard were even wilder than they were last time I saw him. I started by doing some “before” photos to commemorate the four years that Ron spent growing this crazy mane. To me, there’s no point in doing the exact same thing twice, so I tried to get some different emotional content into these shots.

Then, it was time to head to my local barber shop, Gus & Son. Lou (the “son”) was tasked with returning the Mountain Man to civilization, 50% at a time. Gus was amazed at the amount of hair that came off of Ron’s head during this half of the procedure. When your hair can impress a barber who’s been cutting hair for over 50 years, that’s really saying something.

After the half-cut, we headed back to the studio to play with the new look. Being that photos read from left to right, I had originally thought I wanted to shave the left side of Ron’s head first, so it would be like a transformation from wild to civilized. However, I remembered that Ron’s left eyebrow is the one that raises, so I opted to go for the right side instead. Although his 50% look was clearly ridiculous–especially in broad daylight walking down the street–it was important to me for the photos to come across more mystical or mysterious rather than funny. I wonder if I achieved that?

Finally, we returned to Gus and Lou to finish up Ron’s new look, complete with an old-fashioned straight-razor shave and a hot towel treatment.

As we walked out of the barber shop, Ron was marveling at the feel of the new cut, and reminisced about how women used to cross the street to avoid him at night. “Welcome to anonymity,” I told him.