Any insight as to how these photos are done??

[rasheemo]

These are amazing and the most discouraging thing as a rising photographer wanting to emulate this beauty, is that i have absolutely no CLUE how to achieve similar results, even with the best lens money could buy. If anyone can give me a perspective, i would really appreciate it...

how did she achieve the fuzziness mixing with the focused flowers and at the same time light shining around the stems? it's a beautiful effect...

is this just expensive lighting??

i guess that's it for now

 

[elemental]

The "fuzziness mixing with flowers" is a result of a very small part of the photo being in focus. This is referred to as a shallow depth of field, and is accomplished by using a large aperture (low f number). Chances are your average kit lens will not go open enough to achieve extreme bokeh effects like these (many are f/3.5-5.6, while a "fast" lens with a large maximum aperture is f/2 or under). It would really take a book to properly explain how all of this works, but searches for "out of focus" or "bokeh" might be informative.

 

[Bryant]

If you are wanting to try bokeh, I'd go for the nifty fifty. Go on amazon and it's a 50mm 1.8. It's under $100 for a great lens.

 

[Village Idiot]

What's expensive. You could get a quality light and softbox for about $300-$400. You can see the soft box reflection in the model's eyes.

 

[Luke623]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aperature#Maximum_and_minimum_apertures
I thought this might be helpful.

 

[ISI_Stang06]

my guess for the second photo is a bit of post processing through photoshop

 

[BuZzZeRkEr]

It looks as if though both photos spent some time in PP, how much I cannot say unless looking at the original. They are both great photos, seems like the color/saturation has been enhanced in the first, and the second the saturation has been turned down in the eyes and lips to compliment skin tone.

 

[andrew99]

They both have a lot of photoshopping done. It's hard to guess, but the first one seems to have some selective gausian blur, probably several layers blended together, the second one seems to have selective desaturation, skin smoothing, selective sharpening and is a bit over-exposed (her hands are partially blown-out, for example). You could probably get 90% of these effects by downloading Photoshop actions.

 

[Village Idiot]

They both have a lot of photoshopping done. It's hard to guess, but the first one seems to have some selective gausian blur, probably several layers blended together, the second one seems to have selective desaturation, skin smoothing, selective sharpening and is a bit over-exposed (her hands are partially blown-out, for example). You could probably get 90% of these effects by downloading Photoshop actions.

Except that in the 2nd one, it's the lighting that made such a good photo to add some processing too. And to me, that's not a ton of processing.

 

[andrew99]

Except that in the 2nd one, it's the lighting that made such a good photo to add some processing too. And to me, that's not a ton of processing.

Yep, agree 100%. I just wanted to make the point that great lighting alone will not give the exact same effect as that photo. But I think lighting is always the single most important element.

 

[lockwood81]

When posting work that is not your own it is customary on this forum to provide a link rather than have them in your post...

And for my take on the two: As for the first one, very shallow DOF...with the flower being backlit. Second one soft boxes and PP...

 

[Alpha]

As others have noted, the first is done with a shallow DOF and backlit flowers. The halo effect can be done either in post, or if the image is shot slightly out of focus w/ a rangefinder it will produce a very similar effect.

The second shot is just a closeup w/ a diffused strobe firing into the subject's face.