Help dissecting this photographers process?

BrittneyRose

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I have been trying to achieve this type of look with my photography for awhile and while I’m aware that composition is very important in establishing the tone of the image like hers do, but I’m still stumbling over how to meter/edit my shots to look like this. I feel like when I am editing my photos, the dynamic range of my images are just too low to pull out that much detail in the shadows and highlights while also maintaining an image that isn’t too dark to see. Is her style of image lighting the result of image stacking? Please help me understand what I need to do to achieve this moody tone with lighting either through my metering process or editing process.

Their website (Our Life In The Shadows — Tania Franco Klein)
 
On phone, so short answer is highlight metering.
 
And projecting light onto part of a scene and leaving the rest dark. Probably editing to adjust contrast and in some, make the color look, well, off... To me some of it looks like editing to try and make it look like old film photos that have been in a shoebox in somebody's hot attic for years/decades... which I've seen done more than enough, but to each his/her own. Some of what was done I like (for Dior, light and shadows, warm color/light).
 
Went to the URL.... pathetically slow-loading, did not even see a picture after 1 minute on each of two visits... big waste of my time. I can just imagine what the pictures look like.

What kind of camera do you have? Have you thought about using Lightroom and darkening your exposures by 3.0 EV and then using the adjustment brush to paint on light? That is actually a great way to simulate painterly light or dark shadowy light with glowing highlighted areas. Open an image in raw in Lightroom and set the exposure to -3.0. Then, using the Dodge tool do 3 passes of + 1.0 and you will be well on your way. By doing lightening in multiple passes of less than the initial minus exposure, it is easier to do.
 
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Went to the URL.... pathetically slow loading oh, did not even see a picture after 1 minute on each of two visits dot-dot-dot big waste of my time. I can just imagine what the pictures look like.

What kind of camera do you have? Have you thought about using Lightroom and darkening your exposures by 3.0 EB and then using the adjustment brush to paint on light? That is actually a great way to simulate painterly light or dark shadowy light with glowing highlighted areas. Open an image in raw in Lightroom and set the exposure to -3.0. Then, using the Dodge tool do 3 passes of + 1.0 and you will be well on your way. By doing lightening in multiple passes of less than the initial minus exposure, it is easier to do.

I have an xt2 currently.But no I have not tried that yet with Lightroom and will give it a shot now
 
Dani Diamond has a good tutorial on YouTube I think it is about how to paint on highlights on the skin. Based upon that I thought a few years ago that maybe I could do some more things using this technique of using a Lightroom adjustment brush and the Dodge tool. About 4 years ago I shot several Christmas sessions, and I was using a medium gray background cloth. I darkened exposures in Lightroom to -3.0 EV , and then painted on small highlights on the arms and on the bridge of the nose and on the forehead of my people, and then I used a larger brush to "paint light onto" selected areas of the photo.

The idea is to paint on small highlights with a relatively small adjustment brush, and then to use a much bigger brush and paint back on the light that you subtracted when you reduced the initial exposure by 3 EV.
 
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Looks like a lot of shots as the sun is setting in the evening light. Lots of raked directional light through windows or spotlight in the artificially lit. Think there's also some post processing going on with colour grading and darkening of some areas. Colours tend to be on a restricted pallette and on the warm side with gold/turquoise being pretty prominent.
 
I read a lot of these sorts of threads and again I think that the point has been missed here, in this particular instance, relating to this particular style of photography...

Art is about contradictions, not logic, nor absolute values. It is never really about *what is in the image* just as poetry is never about the meaning of the words used.

A photographer and a camera.

The photographer, being human, is highly emotional and irrational. A camera, being a machine, is highly inert and predictable.

So we see emotion in an image and where do we look to understand it?

Emotion exists within out nature as being human, it doesn't exist in the camera. But we still look towards understanding the camera to explain it, to find what drives it rather than looking to ourselves. It seems totally irrational to me and a complete contradiction...

Art is about contradictions...

So we look at an image and see a complete and cohesive whole, (this doesn't happen with every image we view, but when it does...), now is this complete and cohesive whole an absolute property of the image or is it a property of the way we see and process information? It's a very important question because you see a mood in the image and therefore assume that the mood is intrinsic to the absolute properties that are contained within the image. You do not see the image as a series of contradictory statements that you try to understand as a cohesive whole. It's not as odd as it sounds because two contradictory statements often serve to highlight a contrast and create tension because we do tend to view them and understand them as a cohesive whole...

Ask yourself honestly if you really think that there is an absolute lighting setup that when combined with particular camera settings and PP work will always produce *emotion X*, "move the main light a foot to the left and open the aperture 1/3 of a stop for more pathos..."??

Yet still we continue to ask that question.

Art is about contradictions...

If you understand that emotion is driven by the memory and experience within us, and that such memory can be triggered by seemingly abstract and often contradictory visual stimuli... Then it make sense to study your own emotion, what makes you feel, what drives you.

I see in the images a lot of abstract and contradictory statements, and not just *visually contradictory with what else is in the image* but contradictory with your memory and emotion as well. You are presented with things that don't make complete sense together and yet you form just one meaning when viewing, you are presented with a series of shots that throws *image IQ* out the window and yet still try to understand them, or define them, by your understanding of image IQ.

They evoke memories of the 50's and yet the subject is as jaded and yellowed as the false colour that evokes the feeling. Trailer trash scum, you see the images as old and faded, you see the reality of now and see it as past, you see through the advertising gloss of the 50's and the reality of life as it was.

Images of now, with the patina of age and the tarnish of unfulfilled promise interpreted as the reality of what was then, the myths are busted and perhaps a truth revealed. Or just an examination of the photographers own emotions and feelings?

Still think there's a camera setting, lighting set up, or PP process that will help you duplicate these particular shots?

;);););)
 
Tim are you high?
 
I was going to ask if Tim has ever taken any art classes, because that doesn't sound like anything I've ever learned about art.
 
Tim are you high?

:)

Why do you ask, because my answer doesn't fit your definition of logical or rational?

I could easily ask if you've actually looked at the images. Just starting at the top, the first so heavily red but such subdued or darkened appearance. Why, what happens when you darken a blue shifted image? The second with the teeth (once in your mouth) on top of the drink (to be in your mouth), next to the hair, on the cistern. So uncommon a sight? The third, look at it and tell me there isn't a contradiciton between pose and content, in the bath fag in gob and half dressed, on the bog, small bathroom. What is the single meaning?

F8 at 1/80...

;);););)

I'm just telling what I see, and what I see can't be related to PP or camera settings.

I was going to ask if Tim has ever taken any art classes, because that doesn't sound like anything I've ever learned about art.

Which sounds to me, if you will excuse me saying, like someone who has never broken free of their own rationalization or need to create a logic or set of pigeon holes with which to label everything.

How do you create something original, by doing what you've been taught or by understanding the process and following your own interpretation?

These aren't run of the mill wedding portfolio shots.
 
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These scenes would not look anywhere near the same or have the same emotional meaning if the photographer were to shoot them in a light,and bright and Airy and Overexposed Style. Perhaps the first Moody photographer that I can remember was Sheila Metzner. Around 1978 or so, Modern Photography or Popular Photography published a multi-page portfolio of hers and it was in a dark and moody sort of gum arabic style, very old school and by old school I mean like 1905. Being about 17 at the time I was quite taken by the style of her processing. Fast forward 40 years, and photographers have the ability to finish their images in many different looks.

Tim, I think that emulating this look would go a long ways toward making photos that carry similar meanings... dark and mysterious, with the important aspects revealed by light. Colors which are not true but which are evocative...

Of course the subject matter is important too. But for a young photographers such as Brittney, who is 22, being able to emulate the processing look is important but you are correct, the subject in each photo are equally important.
 
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You didn't answer; you're too drunk.

I did answer, I just didn't fit that answer into your rationale, or the format that makes sense to what you think is correct. And this is the point. On forums we study a common language, that of how a camera functions. And we try to fit how we feel about photographs into that understanding. We don't look outside it.

We are emotional and irrational humans.

Photographs are an inert and unfeeling series of dots on a piece of paper or computer screen.

We are moved by images because of the memory within us and not because of the dots outside us on the paper. Art is about understanding human emotion and not the rational arrangements of dots on a computer screen.

YOur comments often don't make any sense to me. If I wanted to move somebody I would look to what it means to be human, not where to place a light. It seems so obvious and *logical* to me.
 
But for a young photographers such as Brittney, who is 22, being able to emulate the processing look is important but you are correct, the subject in each photo are equally important.

I would say that this is where you fail to let go of your grounding in the process of photography. The IQ of the shots is all over the place, it can't be understood on a technical level alone and must also be judged on a purely visual basis. Tania is only 29 and has been doing this for a fair while...

The meaning of an image is decided by the viewers memory and experience and not by r technical process. It is, in my view, illogical to think that the technical process we follow dictates the absolute emotion we experience when we view an image. It's an irrational connection, (the meaning of an image), you can't control it through camera settings and I'm trying to say its exactly the opposite, that visual understanding decides technical process. Therefore understanding the technical process alone is quite meaningless. How many threads do you see on photo forums decrying the sterile and flat nature of modern digital tools? But perhaps it's the way we approach it rather than the tools themselves, perhaps it's the human understanding that is often missing from our *technical* approach.

All I'm saying is that I see a lot more in these images than can ever be explained by a technical assessment. In fact I think such an overview does them a considerable dis-service.
 
I think you are clearly overthinking this. Perhaps it is you who is failing to understand something so basic as how to process photos in the style of the linked-to website. I think you might want to re-read the original post and offer something helpful instead of pontificating on issues which are not germane to the question. But then again I could be wrong. Perhaps you have all the wisdom that is needed for this situation. Perhaps your way is the only way of looking at it. But then again I could be wrong.

I would like to point out that just a few posts earlier someone asked if "you are high?" It seems that you have missed the forest for the trees and are offering some kind of defense of the artistic value of the website photographer. I think the reason for the question "are you high? "is referring to your complete (apparent) lack of understanding of what the original poster was asking about.

It is your long and rambling list of comments that don't make any sense here. I believe the original poster might not have your fluency with written language, and perhaps you are taking her use of the word process to include the entire creative scope of making photos for art, whereas I think most of us were attempting to help her with the actual photographic process and not considering the artistic or compositional or thematic elements that the website photographer displays.
 
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