Fine Art Festive Photo: Winter Portraits in the Studio with Gavin Hoey

In this episode the prolific photographer  Gavin Hoey with Adorama TV is going to share this  awesome Festive Stars background and his method of  how to create Fine Art Portrait  with a festive feel!!

To set the theme of the photograph Gavin uses a pre-made background with a  big star  in the middle of the screen  with lots of small stars above it.  The model will be looking up at the stars in the photo. David continues: “… the only problem is, this is the only star  I’ve got, so this is going to do a lot of work  and there will be a bit of post-processing involved.  Now to make the post-processing a lot easier,  I’m going to go with a black back ground…

… and then I need to light the star.  Now I could use absolutely  any sort of lighting for this.  I’m going to go with the specular LEDs  but anything will work  because all I need is a nice flat image  of the star.  Now if you’re going  to use LED lighting  and aperture priority mode.  Just make sure you adjust  your exposure compensation  probably -2, in my case  to make sure that black background  is genuinely deep perfect black.”

This composition will consist of two types of stars – the center, well lit star; and secondary cloned small stars.

David continues: “My second star photo  needs a bit of logical thinking  because there’s going to be  a bright star in the middle,  lighting the ones along the top,  so I need to light this star  as if it was lit from something below  and in the center,  so that means getting my light source  and getting it lowered down  so I have light coming up from underneath… 

… what I need to do with this  is just give it a little spin,  just a gentle spin  and as it comes around to me  and squares up to me  then I can hit the shutter  and get my shot.

With these two versions of star we can successfully create our festive background in Adobe Photoshop. Luckily for you Mr. Hoey has already created a pretty neat template for that with lots of room for creative freedom.

Once the template is ready, we can bring in the model, in Gavin’s case the amazing Lauren! 

For this light setup Gavin uses  eVOLV 200 with a small Diffuser Dome on it.  David continues: “Diffusing dome  does a couple of things;  it’s smooth the light,  gives a lot more even light  and it mimics the light from the star  in the background. You could do this  with just the bare bulb  but it’s much more comfy for the models  to have a slightly bigger light source  like the Diffusing Dome  to look at.”

“Now the whole thing  is on a boom arm  and if you’re going to use a boom arm,  you need to take safety into account,  so I’ve got a sandbag at the bottom,  a sandbag at the end  and that should mean,  it’s nice and balanced  so it doesn’t sort of suddenly drop down. “

Now, let’s see what would be the best position for the model to take for the final photo.

Mr. Hoey examines – “If Lauren looks towards me,  it doesn’t really work  because we only have one light  in this shot, it’s from above  and it’s not going to light Lauren’s face  unless she looks towards the light. 

And when she does  that works really well. 

“At the moment  the eVOLV 200 is right up  against the background  and although that works,  it is quite shadowy  on Lauren’s face  at least on the side  that I can see  from the camera position.  Now to get around that,  I’m going to move the light  ever so slightly further away  from the background  and that should put a little bit more light  on the side of Lauren  that I can actually see  and that works really well. “

Gavin continues: “I’m really happy  how this is looking  but there’s one last thing  we can do just to refine the position  that Lauren looks at,  so if I asked Lauren  to look towards the light,  it could be quite uncomfortable,  I’m actually going to ask her to look  just slightly past the light  which is a little bit more comfortable  for the models point of view.”

“When Lauren does that  and I go in close looking at her eye,  I can see that the eye is really white  and that is not the look I want.  If I ask Lauren just to look in front  and the other side  of the light,  I can actually see her eye  in the shot  and that looks way better  so when I’m asking Lauren  to look around,  I’m always going to ask her  to look just in front  of the light.

Now it is time to take some pictures! Notice that the model is positioned against grey background, which is really important and will help a lot during processing photo in Photoshop.

After taking several images it is time to fuse our pre-made background  and photos with the model together. To do that let’s drag the photo with the model onto the Gavin’s star project.

After proper sizing ( command + T (Mac)  for size manipulation) we have Lauren positioned right under stars, as we wanted. Let’s stretch the edges of the imported photo so it will nicely cover whole background. Select edges of the photo, press command+T and start stretching the outer side towards the edge of the canvas.

Once we have the whole canvas covered up, it is time to blend the photo in. Go to Layer -> layer mask  -> hide all. 

Gavin continues: “Now this seems really weird  because when you click on it,  all of that work disappears  and what we get is a black rectangle  next to the layer.  That’s a layer mask  and I can bring Lauren back  in just a few areas  by getting the paintbrush tool,  making sure my brush color  is white,  with a big and soft brush, I can just click and paint  and bring Lauren back  through and I end up with that nice  vignetted look as well. “

Try experimenting more with Gavin’s template to get colder – warmer, more pronounced/dramatic looks!

 

 

 

WANT TO LEARN PHOTOGRAPHY?

Check out our WORKSHOPS in Los Angeles that teach you hands-on how to make great photos!

One of our closest workshops – Studio Lighting 101 : Introduction to Studio Lighting and 3-Light Set Up 

will take place on January 9th, 7-9pm, in one of our Los Angeles studios !!!

 

Watch the full episode with Gavin Hoey and Adorama TV: