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.

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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.

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1. Mountain Man Redux

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.

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What is the Golden Hour?

Put simply, it’s that time of day when everything just looks great. During the Golden Hour, you can do no wrong with a camera. People, places and things all look beautiful at this time. Waiting until the Golden Hour can make the difference between a bland photo and a spectacular photo.

When does the Golden Hour occur?

The Golden Hour is not necessarily an hour long. It depends on a lot of things, including where in the world you are, and what time of year it is. It usually begins about an hour or two so before sunset, and lasts until the sun meets the horizon. The sky must be clear or mostly clear for you to experience the Golden Hour. If the sky is cloudy or overcast, you won’t see a Golden Hour. Around here (Southern Ontario, Canada), the Golden Hour is longest and most beautiful in the summer months, from about June until September. After that, it becomes shorter and less effective until the winter months, when we hardly get one at all! So, if you’re living in a similar latitude, take as much advantage of the Golden Hour as you can during the summer. If you’re lucky enough to live near the equator, you will get decent Golden Hour light all year round. If you live in the Arctic or Antarctic, well, you’re going to have to find another way to make your photos great.

Why is the Golden Hour such a great time to shoot?

During mid-day, the sun’s rays penetrate the Earth’s atmosphere perpendicularly, and all of the light gets through. The result is a very harsh form of light that casts sharp and unflattering shadows. Think on-camera flash on a massive scale. Yuck. As the sun descends towards the horizon, its light cuts through the atmosphere at a much flatter angle. This makes the atmosphere work like a giant prism that filters out the blue and ultra-violet end of the spectrum. Cameras hate ultra-violet light, which is why we often put UV filters in front of our lenses. And, because blue has been filtered out, the remaining light takes on a warm and orange glow, reminiscent of romance, adventure, and generally exciting times!

How do I best take advantage of the Golden Hour?

If you’re just making snapshots, the Golden Hour is going to do most of the hard work for you. The light is just better at this time of day, so your photos will look better.

If you want to plan your shot a little more, position yourself so that the sun is coming from behind your subject, towards you. This “backlights” your subject and can produce some really nice rim-lighting effects and interesting shadows. Add to this a couple of human factors–your subject will feel more comfortable not squinting into the sun, and also will enjoy the warmth on their back–and you’re already a long way towards creating emotionally charged portraits. You may have to adjust your camera a bit to compensate for all the extra light it sees by looking into the sun. If you’re using your camera in an automatic or semi-automatic (aperture or shutter-priority modes) look for an EV+/- adjustment, and dial it up to +1 or +2 to ensure that you get some detail in the foreground of your image. If you’re shooting manually, you can just decrease your shutter speed by a couple of stops to get the same effect. Pros will quite often use a reflector or a bit of fill light from an off-camera strobe to gently light the front of the subject.

You can also underexpose your Golden Hour shots, to really pull out the colors of the sunset sky and create dramatic silhouettes of your subjects. Use that same EV+/- adjustment to set a -1 or -2 exposure value. Similarly, you can raise your shutter speed by a couple of stops. The bonus of this is that you can freeze whatever action is happening in front of that golden sunset!

The Eiffel Tower photo above was a bit of a cheat. I actually took that one quite early in the morning, at the “other” Golden Hour. It begins just after sunrise, and goes for an hour or so. It’s quite a bit more difficult to use, though, since you have to get up pretty early to catch it. I left my hotel at 5am to get to that spot in time to take that photo. However, it was the only time I could be assured that the world’s most famous tower would be deserted!

I hope that what you’ll take away from this post is that when you shoot is just as important as what you shoot. Getting consistently great photos takes commitment, skill and discipline, but shooting during the Golden Hour can make the process a whole lot easier. Have fun out there, chasing the gold.

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