Dave Hill is one photographer that I have a lot of awe for. I love the way he creates his images. Some people may say that they are too stylised or cartoonish but after trying to recreate his work, I found that its a lot of work! Even a lot of the tutorials that are around don’t come close to what he does. I believe that I may have cracked it the Dave Hill secret finally. I do welcome feedback in regards to what I have created.
Here are the two …

Hey everyone, sorry that its been so long between updates, so I’ve decided to make this a good one ^_^
For a while now I have been fascinated with the style of Jill Greenburg. Such beautiful emotive portraits, set against beautiful backgrounds.
After studying the key elements of her portraits, now its time to unlock the secrets. If you look at her work, the backgrounds are usually one colour lit with a spotlight an the people have been photoshopped to varying degrees of glowyness.
So this is what we want to retain when …

Been a little while since I have written a tutorial, so I thought I would make it a good one
I’ve been thinking again about the earlier Dave Hill tutorial that I have written and I don’t think that I did his work justice, so here’s take two Again I’m using the Topaz Adjust Filter to speed things up a little.
I looked at the Dave Hill website again (nice upgrade btw!) and carefully studied all the elements again:

Everything is usually in focus and sharp, so foreground and …

A week ago I had the pleasure of shooting with Naomi. It was her first time in front of the camera and she did brilliantly

Happy New Year!!
Yesterday I did a shoot with my best friend testing new lighting set ups. I have posted the new images in my portfolio.

In this tutorial, I’m going to show you how to achieve the Quick  Antique Colouring effect, that you can find in my latest group of actions.

 
1.  If you have retouched the image and made density corrections, press crtl-shift-alt-E to make a merged copy of the image.
If you are working from the original image, press crtl-J. Name this layer Softlight.

 
2. Go to Filter>Blur>Gaussian Blur and apply with a radius between 5 px – 10px .

 
3. Change the blend mode of the Softlight layer to Softlight.

4. Open the Layer Style Palette and …

In this tutorial, I’m going to show you how to achieve the High Saturation effect, that you can find in my latest group of actions.

1.  If you have retouched the image and made density corrections, press crtl-shift-alt-E to make a merged copy of the image.
If you are working from the original image, press crtl-J. Name this layer Overlay.

2. Go to Filter>Blur>Gaussian Blur and apply with a radius between 5 px – 10px .

3. Change the blend mode of the Overlay layer to Overlay.

4. Open the Layer Style Palette and move …

After a bit research, I have developed a range of Jill Greenburg Backgrounds that you can use to spice up your studio images.
As you can see below, the huge effect the background of the image has. The mood can be warmer, colder, more professional, girly or tough.
The following gradients are just on step closer for to unlock the mysterious Jill Greenburg’s technique, without spending thousands on the lighting set up and backgrounds.

The above images show the difference between the original image and the effect of the different backgrounds.
The gradients come …