Thursday, 11 April 2013

New Shoot! (feat. Tattoo Sleeve Blunders!)

Ok so it occurred to me a couple of days ago that because I've been using the same model in all my recent shoots, you might begin to think I'm some sort of obsessive lunatic! Not to worry though because all my recent & upcoming shoots are actually part of an ongoing project where I need to be using the same model in order for it to work.

This week I've been searching for some different ideas to make my model look completely different to what he has looked like in previous shoots. I found the image by Eric T. White (a photographer who I hadn't previously heard of) which I really liked because of the slightly softer black & white tones and the overall composition of the image. I also really liked how the person in the image looked completely different from my model; the tattoos, body language and the fact he is smoking and drinking gave the model the sort of edge I want my model to have. 

Now, I'm not sure if any of you have ever tried to get someone to take up smoking and drinking, and to then get several tattoos done but it isn't easy! In the end we agreed that it would just be easier to buy some fake cigarettes and tattoo sleeves. 

Normally at this point in the post I'd include a few of my final images from the shoot but I thought I'd share some of the editing problems I encountered after the shoot. Honestly, the only problem with some of the images was that you could see the tattoo sleeves were creased. As well as this, you could sometimes see the seem on the sleeves which doesn't make for a very strong image. In future I'd recommend adjusting the body language of the model to avoid showing off those little annoying give aways. 

There were a couple of little photoshop techniques I used to make the fact the model was wearing tattoo sleeves less obvious (I will admit though that I'm not brilliant with technology so there are probably easier and better ways to do this). I started by using the 'smudge' tool to blend the skin-coloured sleeve material into the model's wrist to make the masking technique easier. Next I used the 'clone' tool to mimic the model's skin tone and cover the edge of the tattoo sleeve. It took me a few attempts to get this right so if anyone has any better tips then it would be great if you could share them by putting them in the comments! Finally I just adjusted the black & white settings along with the brightness and contrast settings as you can expect. 

Here are the final images, starting with the edited tattoo sleeve on the left. Enjoy!



As always thanks for reading!

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