A question about post processing for night club images.

nikkw0ng

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Hey everyone. I'm new here, been taking pictures for a while--but looking to become part of the community! A local photographer stands out here in the nightlife industry in Seattle because his nightclub images are pretty impressive. He always is able to create this interesting tone in his images which I find very appealing (for skin tone especially) but haven't been able to figure out what he does or how he does it. Anyone might have any tips in how he achieves a look like this?

(it wont allow me to place images for some reason, please pardon the links.)

http://img259.imageshack.us/img259/7563/38160528334437504539610.jpg

I find it a lot more appealing than the look I'm presenting.. as seen here.

http://img803.imageshack.us/img803/7608/dsc30992.jpg

Is there something about his handling of color or the like that I just haven't learned yet?


Also his handling of the noise (for uploading on facebook, where our company requires us to upload our pictures) the way he does it is much better. Any suggestions? Any tips are greatly appreciated. Thanks!

EDIT: feel free to check out some more of his work here-> http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.283344198378747.69223.109226819123820&type=1
 
I actually think yours is the better basic image, besides the odd distortion thing. If I had to guess what he is doing: he's using a speedlight pointed up either with the diffuser panel pulled up straight in the air to push some light forward or using something like a lightsphere or lumiquest 80/20.
He's exposing for the skin of the subjects and not the overall scene-which means his exposure was a little brighter than yours to begin with. Otherwise? There's nothing special going on there that you aren't doing.

You can brighten your dark orange skin tones by using the HSL tab in Lightroom/Adobe camera raw and boosting the luminance of the reds and oranges. You may need to desaturate them on the saturation tab just a VERY small amount if it's really bad.

For noise the noise removal sliders in adobe camera raw/lightroom are excellent and will control noise very well.
Make sure you are resizing your images to 720px on the long side for facebook and uploading them checking the UPLOAD HIGH RESOLUTION or whatever it is.
 
I actually think yours is the better basic image, besides the odd distortion thing. If I had to guess what he is doing: he's using a speedlight pointed up either with the diffuser panel pulled up straight in the air to push some light forward or using something like a lightsphere or lumiquest 80/20.
He's exposing for the skin of the subjects and not the overall scene-which means his exposure was a little brighter than yours to begin with. Otherwise? There's nothing special going on there that you aren't doing.

You can brighten your dark orange skin tones by using the HSL tab in Lightroom/Adobe camera raw and boosting the luminance of the reds and oranges. You may need to desaturate them on the saturation tab just a VERY small amount if it's really bad.

For noise the noise removal sliders in adobe camera raw/lightroom are excellent and will control noise very well.
Make sure you are resizing your images to 720px on the long side for facebook and uploading them checking the UPLOAD HIGH RESOLUTION or whatever it is.

thanks for the compliment. The reason I like his image is because the highlights are very dull which makes the image look great across all monitor platforms (as differing monitors--mac's especially--model highlights quite differently) and this is an effect i want to replicate. But I will look into the luminance of reds and oranges, haven't gone that route quite yet exactly. I'm guessing the process would be different (using different colors) for people of other skin tones? I appreciate the tip Hopefully this will even things out.
 
Reds and oranges are pretty dominant in all skin tones. You SEE it more in light skin tones because it can tend to glow. In dark skin it is muted a bit by the brightness of the skin overall and the black level.
 
For noise you can get noise reduciton software like neatimage to correct this when shooting at very high iso. Looks like his camera is a bit better then yours and he probably has the iso jacked up more. As for the highlights and processing it would depend on what he was using to edit them. An easy way to get this effect is to increase the lightness of the total saturation. It will make all the colors brighter. He may have a better flash too. there are lots of factors that could be at play here.

I would say if you are associated with this person then ask them directly for advice. Using similar editing processes would give the pics a cohesive feel and be better marketing for the club. Also his shot had back lighting from the bar due to the angle he used where your angle face more away from the bar and resulted in more dark space behind the individuals.
 

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