TaW:#3 - Dramatic Light

Here's a shot I did of Aly for a recent Pink Floyd assignment - wanted to do something inspired by the albumn 'The Wall', you know, "hey teachers - leave them kids alone"...

Canon 1dsmkii 17-40 F4L 200s@F4 ISO 200

It just didn't have any drama to the pic so I thought this would be a good one to work on some dramatic lighting effects. Basically all Dodging and burning. This is really like painting on the picutre with light. The trick is to set the exposure at a very low setting (I was using 10%) you'll barely notice any change, but with each successive stroke you'll slowly add the definition your looking for. This technique is only needed when doing the subtle work on the face and some of the light areas. For a lot of the major burning on towards the edges of the photo, I used a non-distructive technique by creating a new layer with a blend mode of Multiply and anywhere I painted black would be burned in on the composite. The only draw back to this mode is you don't have the control over what tones you burn (shadows, Midtones, or highligts) like you do with the dodge and burn tools.

Results:

Obviously, I composited in some tile in the background for effect (also heavily burned)
All in all a pretty dramatic effect on the picture