A Demo and Talk on Photography and Post Processing by Glyn Dewis, Tuesday 22nd February

Hi Folks,

A Demo and Talk on Photography and Post Processing by Glyn Dewis, Tuesday 22^nd February

 

Quite a pleasing crowd at the club last night with many welcome guests and it was difficult to get into the car park.

Glyn opened the evening by telling us he originally went on assignment shoots taking hundreds of pictures in the hope of capturing all the moods he required and found it exhausting going through them all afterwards.

Also the people taking part in the pictures didn’t know what was wanted of them and were often not showing any interest.

So he devised a way by planning every aspect of what he wants to achieve before he goes on any of his shoots and hopefully from that he will just end up taking one perfect picture. This also involves telling all the participants beforehand of the plans and suggesting ideas to them that have been used in different photographs in the past (even from films). Once there is agreement, clients and models are often enthusiastic and wanting to help to produce the final picture.

Glyn has written several books, one is called ‘Photograph like a thief’ which explains how to improve your photography by stealing the best ideas from other peoples’ images. He has several photographers that he admires, his favourite is Annie Leibovitz. Glyn has built libraries containing many pictures that have inspired him and these libraries have helped him with ideas that may suit a current shoot.

Initially, Glyn said, he had no consistency or style, whereas many photographers had certain styles that one could almost recognise them as a picture coming from that person, whether this be a blue tinge in every photograph or just using a white background as used by Peter Hurley.

Glyn’s style is using grey background paper and using just one light source “but whatever you decide, do the same set up over and over again until it becomes second nature” said Glyn.

He was asked to photograph an Aylesbury boxer called Steve Cook along with his pal. Glyn didn’t want to do the standard photograph with them together in a ring wearing boxing gloves but found a pose used from the film ‘Killing Lincoln’ by Joey L. Which he thought was perfect.

He contacted Steve Cook showing him the image and Steve was enthusiastic and game for doing it. This was the resulting photograph Glyn produced.

At another photo shoot in Southampton, Brian and Glyn needed to get a good shot of a group of people and Glyn said, “group shots are hard to achieve”. Glyn required a room suite and several pieces of furniture to make the scene. However, the suite wasn’t available and Glyn had to make do with a white wall.

Glyn achieved this shot which would be demonstrated to us later in the evening

Also Glyn has shot Arnie Schwarzenegger but I think it was all done in miniature along with Batman which at the time I think was fun theme lol

I’ll be back.

Glyn’s has always had an interest in Military, especially the Second World War. Somebody suggested that he visited a group of people in Bicester who meet regularly and portray themselves as the ‘Oxford Home Guard’, a group of ‘Dads Army’ characters who dress in the uniforms.

Glyn has spent a month photographing them indoors and outdoors and said, “you can almost recognise the characters they play from the photographs”.

They don’t like it up ’em Sir

 

The shots taken with the grey background

Then Glyn did a setup in his own style just using one light stand and adding a reflector inside to refract the light back and down the sides of the umbrella cover.

The light when through two more added sheets to defuse it but Glyn said that is optional.

Also as a background there was his usual grey colour sheet that has become part of his style.

For a model Glyn had brought along a friend dressed as an angler who had a fishing rod in his hands. Glyn pointed out getting the position of the lighting was critical to lighting up one side of the face and also highlighting various parts on the other cheek. Here only one part of the face is lit

Various shots were taken and each time and the result came up on screen to show us the effect.

Brian then held up a silver screen to bounce some of the light back for further effect.

Glyn explained that in some pictures he has seen models can end up with a stare and he suggests that the models makes a very slight squint to give a more natural look.

 

Coffee time

During the interval Glyn did explain to me that it is a good idea to ask the model to move their head slightly forward to make the chin and neckline look better but this only works on the ‘head on’ shots and not from the side

In the second half

Glyn explained that one of the characters in the Oxford home Guard complained that past photographs he always had red cheeks and nose and Glyn said, “this can happen if you are taking cold outdoor shots of people”.

To solve this problem Glyn went into Photoshop Light room where there is an option called ‘Human Saturation’ and by selecting the red from a shown colour wheel and then sliding the lever to its maximum it highlights the red areas.

 

These areas can be toned down moving a colour slider into the Cyan area, Cyan removes red.

Glyn doesn’t have any order in the way he fixes things in images but deals with what jumps out at him first and only does the basic edits in Light room.

For the more detailed changes he uses Photoshop which has a vast array of options available to him.

We were shown the sharpening tool and told how it works. “It’s like painting and the more layers you go over area the sharper it becomes”, said Glyn.

Also we were shown image taken of the guy modelling as an angler and how the eyes could be isolated and worked upon to brighten them and even change everything within the the eye.

Also the dodge & burn tool was used.

Using a brush, layer mask and a blend mode Glyn put some darker lines under the angler’s eye’s to make him look older “but don’t tell him” said Glyn, “Oh he’s here, where is he?” humorously looking into the audience.

I think at this point I had become Capt Mainwaring and had to stop myself from shouting out “Don’t tell him Pike” lol

I obviously could not go into the details of some of the things shown but Glyn eventually went back to the group picture taken in Southampton and using his standard grey image setup was able to create his crunchy grey background, then using a sample image of some flooring was able to angle it all into the picture using layers. One can say the camera doesn’t lie but its post processing partner can certainly tell fibs lol.

A piece of flooring angle being changed to slot under the groups feet

 

It was a very enjoyable evening and thank you to Glyn

 

Next week has two fixtures the print x 3 competition requires all images added to the website by Midnight Sunday, plus the Rosebowl at Wantage

ImageZ Camera Club Program