For the last few months, people have been asking me about the post-production involved in the photos on my blog post “70 basketball portraits I did in two days.”

I always planned on sharing it with everyone but just haven’t had time to put anything together until now. Recently, I was asked to do a guest post for Scott Kelby’s blog and thought, “What better way to share this Photoshop tip with everyone than on Mr. Photoshop himself’s blog, Scott Kelby?” I was pretty giddy, to say the least.

It’s actually a pretty simple process that has a few steps to get this “look” (and its not LucasArts or HDR:)).

I wanted to make sure everyone who reads my blog also got to check it out as well.

Here goes:
There is one thing you must promise me–and yourself–before reading this post. Repeat (or read) after me:

“I, (state your name, or clever web user ID) will not overuse this technique on EVERY photo I take. I will only use it in moderation.”

Good, now that we got that out of the way, I just want to say that I don’t have an action made, nor do I think you should make one with this style of post processing. It all has to be about feel and knowing when you have gone too far or when to go further. It all varies depending on the scene and lighting. On this session of portraits, I went further than I normally would because that is what the client needed.

Step one: Lighting

To get a hard look, you have to have a hard light. I started with a three-light setup for most shots: Two back lights set at full power (Alien Bees Ab800) behind the subject, hitting the sides of their faces, and one in the front at a lower power with a small softbox. I added a fill light and background light when needed. See setups here.

This light set up changed slightly depending on the subject.

Step two: RAW Conversion

On this photo I started with a raw conversion and just slightly tweak levels to get the photo at a good color and contrast. The photo below is very close to raw, I cleaned a few dust spots that were on the photos from not cleaning my camera before…oops.

Step three: Dodge and Burn

The next step is a the one that really gives it that 3-D look. It’s were you take the subject’s highlights, shadows and features and “Carve” them out using dodging and burning.

Now there are a ton of ways to do this but this is how I do it. I first create a new layer by pressing (apple shift N) or by going to Layer/New on the top bar. I then change the blending mode to Softlight. Then change your brushes opacity to 5% and make sure it’s on 0% hardness. You can make two layers, one for highlights, one for shadows, but I usually just use one.

Next I go along and “paint” (with the brush) or enhance shadows and highlights that are already there. This really makes the photo pop out.

After this is done.

Step four: High Pass

I enhanced the contrast by duplicating the original image layer and de-saturating it by pressing (command (apple)-shift-”U”). This is important. If you don’t do this, your photo’s color will be really off once you select your blending mode. Then I select either soft light or hard light, depending on the amount of contrast I want to add.

The next thing I do is go to filter/other/high pass. This is what gives it the shinier look. This is also a key step because you must use judgement to determine how much of the effect you want. I usually go from somewhere between 100-200 depending on the amount of highlights I want to bring out. Again, you have to use your best judgement on this.

If the effect is still to much be sure to use your layers window and decrease the opacity on the high pass layer.

Step five: Color

The next thing I did was desaturate the reds in the photo. I used the hue/saturation window for this and changed the edit color from “master” to “red.”

Again, use your best judgment on this as well and take down as much or little as needed.

After I de-saturated the reds, I cropped and turned the image.

Step six: Final Touches

I’m almost done and I have the look I want, so I increase the contrast and brighten the photo.

Below is my final layers window.

As you can see, a lot of it is manual Photoshop, where you should tweak certain aspects and not rely on an action.

I hope that helps some of you in your Photoshop quests.

I would love to see finished products, so be sure to leave your comments here or on my blog with links to your finished work. If you have any questions, feel free to ask.

If you would like to see more photos and set up shots from the shoot click on the photo below.

Thanks for reading!

About a month or so ago I shot a few portraits of Jane Rah, a high school golf rock star who has already played in the LPGA tour. Here are some of my favorites and a few set ups. Sorry, I dont have more. It was a rush to get all the photos we needed in before the sunset. We met around 6:30 so we wouldn’t have to deal with such harsh light. I brought along my awesome assistants Chris and Brian to help trek the gear around the golf course. Luckily when we showed up we had a golf cart waiting for us to load up. (This was the first time I ever drove one of these bad boys and I must say I just may take up golf after driving this thing.) We brought along two alien bees AB800 lights with a beauty dish and a softbox umbrella (brolly box, I think is what they are called, I may be wrong) I used the beauty dish for the majority of the shooting. I also had my trusty Alien Bees Vegabond II battery pack. (which is awesome, I just picked up second one.) We had to make five different photos for the magazine so I already had some in mind because I scouted the course before hand. Our first location was with the golf cart on the first fairway but later I wished I would have taken the first photo with out it because I feel it distracts or maybe just move it so there is more separation between the two. (that maybe just me)

-1D Mark III 16-35 at 22mm The beauty dish was the main light (off camera right) and the sun acted as the rim light (notice the warm glow on her arm and face) Settings ISO 50 1/250 F10

-1D Mark III 16-35 at 16mm Sun was main light. Alien bee with just a reflector was rim light. It was behind and to the left of the golf cart. Settings ISO 100 1/320 F6.3

-1D Mark III 16-35 at 16mm Beauty dish main light off camera right, sun rim light Settings ISO 100 1/320 F8

Canon 1D Mark III 85mm 1.2 Natural Light Settings ISO 100  1/5000 F1.2

Next I went to the hole on the course that overlooked the ocean. Canon 1D Mark III 85mm 1.2 Beauty dish main light (and sun) off camera right. Alien bee with a brolly box camera left behind her for a rim. Settings ISO 100  1/125 F7.1 On the way to the sand trap I wanted to go to I noticed the sun was almost done and thought it would be a great silo of Jane if we stopped and shot it.

Lens (mm): 35 ISO: 50 Aperture: 8 Shutter: 1/160 Temperture white balance 10k  (in camera) Once we got to the sand trap I started I hustled to get the lights in place not only was the sun almost 100% gone Jane’s parents were waiting for here. Oops! I dont remember taking this shot, but Chris is standing in with a “flag” (black cardboard from walmart) and Brian is standing there forgetting to turn on the other light (beauty dish).

The other light is off to the left cross lighting Jane. This is the shot I envisioned the entire time and was waiting for unfortunately they don’t always turn out like you want them to. Turns out its hard to hit sand up and someone and not blink every-time, but its OK. I still like the photo. I also had the coach throw in the ball from the side so it didnt hit me in the face.

Lens (mm): 16 ISO: 200 Aperture: 10 Shutter: 1/320

I laid on the ground side ways and shot underneath a small piece of plexiglass so the sand wouldn’t hit my camera (and face!) I also had a towel over my head. I looked pretty sweet Im sure. Next, I got up to shot the same shot but this time of her coming out of the bunker.

Canon 1D Mark III with a 70-200mm 2.8 Lens (mm): 95 ISO: 200 Aperture: 9 Shutter: 1/320 Two lights cross lighting, one in the front more than the other to hit the face better.

I had a lot more good ones but will put them up later if anyone wants to take a look at them. Thanks again for looking and like always feel free to ask questions! *UPDATE* This article is now featured on www.askthephotographer.com

Last month I went to Tucson AZ for the Arizona Cactus Classic. It is a tournament for all the top high school basketball players in the country, we are talking next Lebron and kobe here. My job was to get portraits of all the players.

I was first set up (by the tournament people) in a room with very little to work with. About three feet of shooting space, seriously. So I scouted around the arena and found a loading dock to take all the photos in. It was great because it a had a very gritty feel to it and I could get three differnt looks in a very short amount of time, which was good because I got between 1-5 minutes with each of the players. I was seriously grabbing them as they were walking into the gym to play.

The light set up was pretty  simple. I wanted to create a very dramatic light to go with the gritty-ness so I used to back lights (alien bees b800) with no modifiers, just reflectors for rim lights a small soft octa-box in the front for fill and another light hitting the background (on some shots).

I used a nikon D3 for all the shots with a 24-70mm.

Here are some shots from the event.

Remember to click on the photos for larger sizes.

(Wanted to mention these are best viewed in Firefox for some reason. Safari makes them look distorted when clicked on.)

Please feel free to ask questions.

If you want one, leave your address! When there printed, Ill send you one.

This year, I wanted to do something fun for our christmas card. We always plan out one but never follow through with it. So this year I had to go all out. What better way to start, than with a crude 1st grader like drawing that took about a minute.

Then we add the models. This was a tough one because peanuts (our dog) schedule is very full and doesnt like to be photographed and Rachel gets tired of me taking pictures of her almost immediatly after I start.
First we started with peanut. To get this amazing poise Rachel held a treat above her head to make her stand up. The viscious craze in her face was just a bonus.
Then we added us. I had to place my camera on a tripod and use remote to trigger the camera. To light it, I used 4 alien bees, a large soft box for the main light , 2 lights behind to give some highlights, and one on the background.

I then took the photos and cut them out using OnOne’s Mask Pro 4.1 (free trial!) This is a really cool program and a huge time saver. I toned the images together and gave our legs shadows under to make the photos blend together better. I then took the head of Peanut and rotated it down. Then I put it on a green background (using a new layer and paint bucket) to clean up the rest of the pic.

Then I needed a background. So I found a sky picture on a free stock photo page on the internet.

We just moved to Los Angeles this year from washington so what better way to show that than the Hollywood sign. (courtesy of my friend and his point and shot camera) I obviously took the liberty of making the hill the sign sits on a little more rounded. I did this by taking the left side and pasting it at an angle on the side, then blended it.

I added some palm trees to make it more california like and birds cause we were flying and needed company.

Finally I changed peanuts paws in the rear to look more like she is not standing on something. I did this by copying her front paws and then transforming them and blending them in. Then I put a motion blur on us and peanut to make it look like we are going fast (and cause its fun)

Thats it! If you have any specific questions leave me a comment.
Thanks for looking! Special thanks to our dog for being a trooper.