Become Better Photographer: How To Shoot High Contrast Natural Light Portraits with Mark Wallace

November 24, 2018

In this episode with Mark Wallace and AdoramaTV we will show how to create a high contrast grungy portrait, with nothing but natural light.

With help of his awesome model – famous traveler Polo, the couple has a really simple lighting setup.

There’s this really nice soft shade, coming through a tent roof right above them. And there is also an open shade, with a lot of light coming from the street size.

Mark continues – “Now what that is going to do for us is, that it is going to give Polo some amazing specular highlights in his eyes. If we look at this from a different vantage point, you can see that the light is shining over the patio and reflecting off of the buildings on the other side of the street.

You can also see that these buildings reflect different amounts of light, and that they are different shapes and sizes, and so what that’s going to do for us is — that when we crank up the contrast in Lightroom, and do our post-production, that’s going to make his eyes very sparkly, and because he’s wearing a black jacket, he’s got this really dark beard with just a touch of grey, and we’ll crank that up, and that’s gonna make everything on his beard to be really, really pronounced.

Mark gets really focused on his eyes, and his beard, while shooting with my 50 mm prime lens and wide open aperture at f/1.4. According to Mr. Wallace: “…now that’s gonna do two things for us, Number 1. Again, it’s going to make sure that the focus is on Polo”s eyes. They’re going to be crystal clear, and everything else is going to sort of fall out of focus.”

It is interesting to note that the background – a simple balcony glass door is not really a ‘cool’ background, but because it’s out of focus, and because it’s also reflecting all the light, and the images of the buildings across the street, it’s going to turn out to be pretty nice.

Let’s start shooting! Always give yourself options, shoot some horizontal, and some vertical shots to present a variety for your client.

After a shoot is over, let’s switch over to Lightroom. Mark has already decided that he will do two versions, a color version, and a black-and-white version.

For color version, first let’s work on some color toning, and change the clarity and the blacks, the mid-tones, the highlights, to get that really high contrast look.

We are driving for a really cool tone, which is achieved by changing the color temperature.

Mark continues: “I’ve also changed my highlight shadows, and whites etc, to create the contrast that I want, and then I also cranked up the clarity to + 20, that is a pretty significant jump for a portrait, and then last but not least it took my saturation down to – 17, and we can look in here and see that this is pretty punchy as is, but we need to, we need to take it one step further.” And that is to finish editing in Photoshop – to add some layers, some filters, and most notably utilize Mark’s favorite Nik software collection, to really add punch to this image.

Steps in Photshop:

copy the original photo to preserve a non-destructive image.
In filters, Mark uses the Nik software collection. “Of course it’s one of my favorites, and I’m going to use analog effects Pro 2. Now once again” For this example Mark has created a custom camera, named ‘Polo Grunge’, which has following settings applied.
Play with Basic adjustments, add some detail extraction at 56%. Mark changed the brightness, contrast, the saturation
Good idea to add a very mild lens vignette, “and most importantly I changed the film type to subtle, and then chose this first image in the second series here, so that gives it that toning. It’s really what I want.”
Change the grain. Mark cranked it up to 254, and made this over to the hard side, to give it that really grungy look. So if we zoom in to 100%, you can see this artificial grain, and that’s really making Polo’s eyes, really nice and punchy.
Add a high-pass filter. That’s just gonna over sharpen this image and give Polo’s beard his eyes and his hair that extra-special sharp look. To do it, create another copy of the layer. Go to ‘ filter’ -> ‘other’ -> ‘High Pass’. “Now I want to do this a pretty, pretty, strong filter. So I’m going to take this up to 2 pixels. That is way more than you would ever use on a standard portrait, but we’re going for grunge. We’re going for really high contrast.” Change the layer to an overlay layer.

With these settings you can really get very pronounced catch light reflections in model’s eyes.

To compare again, this is our image straight out of Lightroom.

This is our analog effects Pro that grunge, and the grain, and this is the high pass filter, giving that even more of a grungy look. Looks pretty cool!

Let’s do even better!

Now we are going to create black and white version of the image by clicking ‘black and white’ setting in Lightroom, and then adjusting the highlights, shadows, whites and blacks and working with the ‘clarity’ to give it a little bit more pop, and contrast.

We’re going to finish editing it in Photoshop. Editing steps in Photoshop would be the same as for previous image. But this time, we’re going to be using ‘silver effects Pro 2’ in Mark’s favorite Nik collection (since it is made for that).

Our global adjustments include taking the mid-tones up just a little bit, Bumping up the contrast, really bumping up the structure, that’s giving us all of this really, really fine, control over the hair, and his beard, making it look a little bit whiter than it actually is.

Mark continues: “The other thing that I have done, it’s probably the most important is, I’ve changed the film types I’m using an Agfa APX 400, that’s adding some of this grain to make it look more like a 1970’s photo, that was shot on film”. The last touch is to add a High Pass filter. That is it!

Let’s do a final comparison – our black-and-white image, straight out of Lightroom:

Our image in Silver Effects Pro, with high pass filter (so it’s over sharpened) , but that’s ok!

Now that is a really grungy image!

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 102 : Portrait Photography Lighting

will take place on November 29th, 7-9pm, in one of our Los Angeles studios !!!

Watch the full episode with David Bergman and Adorama TV:

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Become Better Photographer: How To Shoot High Contrast Natural Light Portraits with Mark Wallace

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