Apr 11
2
Paint with light portrait: Photo recipe
Painting with light can be both frustrating and rewarding. In this photo recipe you’ll see the step-by-step breakdown of making this photo:
Here’s the breakdown:
- Capture multiple frames of the same scene, focusing on different areas of the scene
- Select a “base” image and the others that will be layered with it
- Create your PSD file
- Paint on masks, use clone/heal to create your capolavoro
Step 1: Capture
Capture for paint with light can be frustrating. For this photo, I set up the scene and a tripod in a completely dark room and used a Maglite for illumination – with and without a “plastic white bag” diffuser. Here’s the run down:
- Don’t try to light the whole scene in one frame
- Keep exposure times down to say 30 – 45 sec
- Make sure your subject is in a comfortable, and well-braced position
- The camera (Canon 5D2) was set as follows: mirror lockup, 2-sec delay timer, between f/8-11, 20-45sec
- I like to keep the aperture in that f 5.6-f11 range
- As you expose multiple frames, try to picture the final image, and where the perceived “key” light might be, and the angles that you want to paint the light at. Having a more methodical approach will result in images that have some sense of balance/order to them
- Keep moving if you enter the frame during exposure
- Don’t be afraid to get in close – closer light will be more diffuse – but higher in intensity
- You can never have enough frames to play with
Step 2: Pick the good ones
Take a look at all your frames and select the one “best” image (usually with the main subject looking best) to use as the “base” of the image. I’ve used as many as 10 shots for one final image. I like to enter comments into the EXIF that say things like “Speaker looks sharp, less specular highlights” or “Cool ghost-looking effect in lower right” for reference during editing. I also used Lightroom 3 to convert the images to Black and white, adjust exposure, and a few tweaks before bringing them into PS. Here are the 6 shots I worked with for this photo:
Step 3: Load ‘em into Layers
This takes a little thought and visualization, but take the photos that you want to work with and load them into layers in Photoshop – you may have to rotate or move them a bit here or there to sure they are aligned. Unfortunately the align layers function doesn’t really work too well with PWL images. Create inverted layer masks (all black) on all the upper layers.
Step 4: Start Painting
Here comes the hard part (and the fun part). You can now begin to create your image by selectively painting with white on the masks of all the upper layers, revealing elements from all the frames in your stack. I like a soft lower-opacity round brush. The possibilities are endless here. Don’t be afraid to use the clone stamp and healing brush on the images to get rid of any unwanted streaks or exceedingly bright spots. Generally, I have brighter and darker exposures to work with, so there’s an option to increase or decrease the overall tone of any area in the image. You’ll notice that the speakers were way too hot in the initial image, for example. Here’s an example of one of the layer masks:
Okay! Have fun, and PWL Leica BOSS.
