Week 12 – The Coffee

Info

I don’t drink coffee, I confess. And yes, I did try all those fancy kinds, however, I just can’t stand the smell. And well, the smell is very important to me.

This photo was inspired by my mind itself. I have probably seen something like that in the past, and my brain showed it to me again a while ago. I needed a few attempts before I liked the result.

The editing is also very unusual for me. You probably already noticed how much I love contrasts, deep blacks and crispy highlights. This picture is so much different I don’t believe I actually took it;)

Tech

I wanted to keep it simple, although I couldn’t resist and added a second light. The main strobe was set at 1/32 power and it’s widest setting. I was using f1.8 so I didn’t need much power.

50mm (75mm on FX), 1/320s, f1.8, ISO 200

Second light was at 1/16 power with a grid and 3 orange gels. I put it on a shelf behind me pointing almost directly down.

Post Processing

I know some of you would be interested in some sort of a tutorial on this kind of look. I didn’t plan one, but decided to write a few words exclusively for my readers.

1. My very first step for all non-street photos is to double the layer. I call it retouch and begin basic retouching. I rarely do anything fancy on this layer. Most likely I would remove annoying skin blemishes, a few loose hairs and lens/sensor dirt. If there was more to retouch, like compositing, I would work on separate layers for each element.
2. This is my usual step, I create a hue/saturation layer and set it to 0. Then I lower the opacity of this layer to taste. This time I used 30%.
3. Now is time for curves. I most often use just one curve and make it as perfect as I can. To achieve the bleached look you need to grab the curve in the black-end and move it up. It will make blacks gray.
4. Our next step would be to add some color to this now grayish photograph. There are literally hundreds of way to achieve it. I often use Color Balance tool for this, however, this time I used another hue/saturation layer set to colorize.
5. I picked an orange/brownish color, set the saturation to 100% and then lowered the opacity to taste. I would use something between 25 and 45% for this kind of look. The more you give, the more vintage it will look. Over 45% it looks too colorful in my opinion.
6. The last step is a little vignette in corners. You could make it stronger, I decided for just little darkening.

And that is it. Sorry that I didn’t include any steps-pictures, but I guess this look is very taste-dependent and you need to try it yourself.

Two additional shots below. Enjoy and don’t forget to tell me what you think.