Different Interpretations

I am always amazed at how I can do a little tweaking here and there in Photoshop and come-up with a totally different look in a photograph. Today’s photos come from my visit to Dickens on the Strand. Many people dress-up in Dickens-period costumes which means there are many opportunities to do different interpretations in your final print.

In the first image, I wanted to isolate on the two subjects. I wanted to emphasize their face and just give a hint of their settings.

Camera settings: Nikon D3, 28-70mm f/2.8 at 60mm, shot at ISO 200, f/6.7 and 1/180 of a second

Post Processing:

Lightroom—set white and black point, and added mid-tone contrast.

Photoshop—used nik Color Efex Pro tonal contrast filter to add detail to the clothing of the ladies; used nik Color Efex Pro soft skin filter to even out the ladies’ faces; added some local contrast to their eyes.

In the second image, I wanted to get a “real” Dickens look—edgy, off beat, and rough. I need to have a lot of depth of field so I selected an f-stop of 11 and adjusted the power of my strobe accordingly.

Camera settings: Nikon D3, 28-70mm f/2.8 at 45mm, shot at ISO 200, f/11 and 1/125 of a second

Post Processing:

Lightroom—set white and black point, and added mid-tone contrast, de-saturated the colors.

Photoshop—used nik Color Efex Pro tonal contrast filter to add detail to the entire image and set opacity of the layer to 60%; used nik Color Efex Pro bleached bypass filter to give the image an overall edgy feeling.