What's the name of this look?

[bleeblu]

And how can I recreate it? I've contacted the photographer but he hasn't replied. Much thanks!

Not nude but NSFWish

Where Professional Models Meet Model Photographers - ModelMayhem
Where Professional Models Meet Model Photographers - ModelMayhem

 

[Ysarex]

It's called severely compressed tonal response. Make sure the photo has nothing in it that remotely approaches black and likewise nothing anywhere near white. In other words flatten it out to the point where the blacks actually look hazy-dark-grey. (In non-fashion genres it's called really bad contrast.) Then shift the white balance off neutral so the entire photo has an orange color cast. In Photoshop you can accomplish this using the Difference blend mode and the Hue/Saturation control.

Joe

 

[Derrel]

Procure an attractive female who is wearing A) a bra under B) a macrame or lace top and c) a pair of panties. Have her stand in a shaded area, then shoot pictures of her. The lighting will be mostly shadowless, and low in contrast. Bring the images into photoshop, and make sure as Ysarex said, that there are NO blacks in the image, and not bright whites. Maybe take the tone curve in the middle area, and pull it down and to the right a bit, to make the image very low in contrast. BTW, I downloaded the first image, and set a black point of around 19, and set a white point just by guess at 234, and BAM! The image had some snap and contrast, and her white lace top looked....white!!!

If you look at the second shot, you can see a really,really,really "hot" shaft of sunlight grazed the top of her head, and totally,totally burns out (blows out, burns out, same thing). The thing is, when working in this kind of lighting, open shade, the lighting is pretty low in contrast, or "low-ratio"...there really is almost NO DIRECTION of the light...there are almost no shadows that show any direction of the light...this kind of lighting is well-liked by people who want light that is bland, safe, and well, bland...make no mistake, it can be used to good effect, but then again, it can also be quite plain and almost boring. When shafts of sunlight come in, as they do in the second shot, the way this photographer shot this is a bad way to go...he desperately needed fill on shot #2, but did not have any...to me, shot #2 is a throwaway.

This kind of lighting can look very good when the exposures given in-camera match the subject matter; when the light is THAT FLAT, as in open shaded lighting with very little direction, you can expose "over", "on" , or even "under", and can create decent images, and image s with very different "feel" to them. OVER-exposing is often quite lovely under that kind of lighting. This is a type of lighting too where white balance can often be set pretty high, like 7,000-10,000 Kelvin, depending on where this type of lighting is found. This kind of light can exist in town late in the afternoons/early evenings, in between buildings, in alleyways, etc.,etc..

 

[bleeblu]

Whoa that all makes sense. Thank you guys so much. Didn't even think it was something to do with the actual shot.

 

[terri]

And, since this is isn't an alternative photographic process but a digital one, I've moved this thread to the appropriate forum. Good luck with your project!

 

[amolitor]

I am puzzled by the popularity of this look amongst amateurs.

It *feels* like something that people are copying from current fashion trends, since it's often a fashion-y photograph they've done this to. But I'm not seeing this misty flat look "out there" at all. As I just reading the wrong magazines, or have the unwashed masses invented a pseudo-fashion look for themselves?

 

[Derrel]

I think the look is a reflection of the popularity of many Instagram filters that basically squash contrast, and apply a slight veil over the image...I do not see this exact look all that much either in published work, but it does seem to have an appeal to a substantial number of people. I think one of the things it conveys is a sense of "realness", or being true-to-life...in that the images presented in this style have the bad black point and the mushy contrast of SOOC JPEG images of d-slr's of a few years back. This low-contrast look is, I THINK, being viewed or interpreted by many of today's younger viewers as "authentic digital", as in an image that has been shot digitally, and which has NOT been super-saturated, or "juiced", or "jazzed up", or "maxed out", to use a number of vernacular phrases for the hyper-saturated, over-the-top look that has become popular with this same set of viewers.

I thought Ysarex's reply above was somewhat dismissive of the value of the original photos; perhaps that's an unfair reading of his post, but I thought his response indicated somewhat of a bias against the original two sample photos, which are, by traditional standards, quite bad in terms of technical values, and which have what many fastidious workers (like Ysarex) would call "bad post processing". Anyway, I do not think this image style is always bad, nor always good, but it does have, I think, a connotation of being "authentic digital", at least as far as younger viewers and their opinions. There is an entire generation now that has grown up on images that have been almost exclusively, shot on digital. Anyways, no value judgements here, just trying to point out what I think these two sample represent, which is again, a type of "authentic" image, made with a digital camera. A type of rebellion against the hyper-processed digital images we see now with such frequency.