Week 16 – Heads

Info

I had an idea for this concept for so long! However I could never decide what would there be on my face. I was planning white paint, white and black stripes, camouflage and many other.

Finally, being quite busy (and sleepy!) I decided to go without any distractions, just my face, to at least have the set prepared.

I was sure this session would be just a test for a paint-version, but while editing images I came up with this pair and couldn’t resist. As it turned out, it was the right choice.

Tech

To create this image I used two photos taken directly one after another. I was sitting in a dark room, with black backdrop and wearing a black t-shirt.

The setup was very simple. Just one shoot-through umbrella over the camera. I checked different settings to control the shadows, finally decided for wide setting (24mm) and 1/4th power.

Camera was first set to f11 but I came down to f9 to make the skin brighter. I shot this at 24mm on DX, so would be 36 on FX.

In post production I used brushes to clean up some hair and remove neck. To preserve my beard I used combination of high-pass on overlay and black brush on soft-light layers.

What do you think?