Musician promo shots

Digital Matt

alter ego: Analog Matt
Joined
Jan 30, 2004
Messages
5,358
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Location
Santa Barbara, CA
Website
www.mattperko.com
Can others edit my Photos
Photos NOT OK to edit
I had my friend Bobby Selvaggio up to the apartment today. I've been working with him on his website, and I told him I'd take some new picturse for him. Here's a few that we picked out tonight. I'm going to redesign his website around this theme.

head_sax.jpg


playing_close.jpg


playing_spotlight.jpg


splash_page.jpg


Thanks for looking :)

The unedited shots are available here:

http://www.anti-rejection.com/images/bobby/

The white balance is not all the same. C1 was acting funny.
 
Another nice set Matt :)

Curious about your bg light. What size grid are you using and how close is it to the bg? Are you using any type of flag or gobo? It looks like you're working in a fairly small space...and the light is controlled very nicely.

I'd like to see a 'set' shot just before you take a final image ;)
 
Great of course Matt! Especially like #2... I too am curious about your studio???? Your lighting always has wow factor. You are a talent and like woodsac, i would love to know more! jem
 
Thanks everyone.

My light setup is pretty simple. It wasn't the same for all of these, but basically a 800 ws key with softbox, reflector for fill. I alternated from a white reflector, to silver to change lighting ratios. I use an 800ws strobe with the 7" reflector for the background light. No modifiers. I have it close to the wall, at an angle a little off perpendicular. Most of the light hits dead on, but some spills out giving that nice gradient. I do want to get a honey comb though, so I can control it even more. I also use another 800ws strobe, again with just the 7" reflector, in the back at the same side as the bg light, to fill the hair. It's up high pointing down on the side/back of the head and body. It gives a nice highlight on that side.

That was it for this shoot.

If you looked through the whole shoot that I linked to, you'll see shots of him with his son. Those were done simply with 2 softboxes in front, one on either side at a 1:1 ratio, and a background light off to the side more.

My studio is just my apartment, and any where I can find room. These were done in my living room. We painted all the walls red. It's a fairly large room that is sparsly decorated, and opens up quickly for photos. I was shooting the length of the room here, so my background area was smaller, but I can get the subject further from the background, which is nice. If I use the long wall, I can have more background to work with, but can't get as far away. I would guess the dimensions of the room are probably like 10x25, or 12x30', around there.

Thanks again :)
 
Great shots as always Matt.

The lighting as others said is very controlled and I like the color you chose, very warm.

My only suggestion is that in two and three I don't like the folds in the backdrop. They distract me. However, in number 4, I really like the folds and think they add a neat texture.

Nice work, don't forget to post the website when you are finished!
 
Thanks EB. I wish those were folds, but those are imperfections in the wall. I will probably clone them out for the final copies.
 
Matt - Here goes my first comments here at TPF so I hope I don't break any rules, written or unwritten. I think your work is cool and my comments are meant to be helpful, not critical.

When looking at your cmyk ratios, I notice the magenta is 5 to 15 points higher than yelo in the flesh, which is what gives these such a red look. It's pretty tough to tame the flesh when the mag is higher than yelo. I'm not sure if it's due to your camera's chip reading the near infrared light, or perhaps the conversion to sRGB is causing a shift. Also, if the entire room is painted red, well, then reflections are gonna rule.

Also, I was wondering if you've tried pointing that hair light so it provides a little rim light on the back of his head & shoulders to separate him from the background and add depth. Just a thought.
 
Thank you Jazz. How are you evaluating the color on these? With photoshop? They don't look to be too red (in the skin tones that is) to me, but I could be wrong. There could be a vast difference in our monitors as well.

As for the rim lighting, that is what I was going for, but I didn't have quite enough spread on the light I don't think. Things were getting a little cramped in my living room. In the past i have bounced the rim light from a silver umbrella to get more spread, and I'll to try that next time.

Thanks again for commenting. You didn't break any rules :p
 
Monitors, yes exactly. That's why I was just using the numbers, from cmyk mode in PS CS2.
 
I'm curious why you converted them to CMYK to evaluate the color, and what specifically you are looking at?

FYI, these were shot in raw, and the white balance is fully adjustable by color temperature. I'll have to look to be sure, but I'm fairly certain these are at 5000k.
 
Matt – Mainly just because I’m used to cmyk, having come from the color correction end of the printing industry. I don’t have enough experience yet with rgb to point to numbers for a good fleshtone. But in cmyk, for caucasians like your friend, unless you want a sunburned look, the yelo should be higher than magenta by roughly 5-20%. As you pointed out, all of our monitors are not the same and there is no way to color correct for everyone’s monitor. But the numbers can be trusted. Anytime I have a digitally captured flesh tone, I take the file into cmyk mode and just hover the eyedropper while looking at the info pallette. If the magenta is higher than yelo in the flesh, as it often is, I change that right then and there with curves. One reason why magenta might be higher than yelo in the capture is that the camera’s chip sees near infrared light and we don’t. It renders more red than we want.

Have you taken the light temp for your lights, both with and without modifiers? I rented a color temp meter and found my lights, with softbox, to be about 4650 K. With my new camera, I can set that in the white balance setting. It helped, but it does not solve the problem of digital captures often being too red.

Please understand that I don’t say this way is the only way. Whatever works. Just trying to explain one approach.
 
Jazz, thanks for explaining. I haven't actually checked the color temp of my lights. That would be interesting, and I'll look into renting a color temp meter. I've never done much technical analyzing of color in digital, other than altering the color temp to fit the lights. I usually just eyeball it. I always have a problem with my raw files being too red though, and I usually start by reducing the saturation a bit, then moving the color temp at or below 5000k, and the tint towards green/yellow, and away from magenta/blue.

This is definitely not the scientific approach. As I said, I'm just going by eye. I'll take a closer look at these when I get home, and try to look at the RGB numbers in the raw file, and see what's happening. Thanks for your help.
 
Love the red background, my eye did go straight to the lines so I suspect you will be busy cloning them out - bummer.

I really like the space in the last shot, could make for a good back image on the web site if the links buttons are handled well. What do you work in for web design?
 
I had a look at the web link and really like 8727, clone in some red to the RH and again a great background for web or album.

Interesting how the lighting was different on the kids face, difficult to get the even I should imagine. But some great shots the family would be pleased to see in a frame.

Nice set Matt, thanks for sharing.
 

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