Anatomy of a coffee shoot

Further to my last post, I've had a lot interest in the ultimate shot of George, the coffee roaster. Some skeptics don't believe that it was a quick shot in less than ideal conditions and lots of people want an understanding of the technical issues I had to deal with.

So this post isn't about the psychology of a portrait sitting but more the nuts and bolts of how to shoot an environmental portrait.

To convince you I wasn't in a studio, I've taken the before shoot. For the record, this was taken at 2.26pm or seven minutes before the final shoot.



There's a lot not to like about this image. The uniform lighting doesn't make George the focus of the image. Instead there is a clutter of things that catch the eye - the square control box, the wiring on the back wall, the blue ducting running vertically on the support beam. Even worse, George doesn't look trim though he looks like he is geared up for work since I asked him to wear an open necked shirt and casual jacket. He's not looking at the camera and that was intentional. George is a busy guy and the last thing he wants to do is waste time looking at a camera when the photographer is still planning the shoot.

This image helped me to decide where to place George; either to the left or to the right of the roaster machine. Since the square contol box was distracting I decided that George would stand in front of it so the coffee machine would be to his left.

Next I didn't want to see anything but George and the roaster machine, no cables, no wiring... A 32" flash umbrella was placed about 1 metre to George's right: the flash umbrella was used to turn the small hard light wireless-controlled flash into a large softer light source which would flatter George.

But a small flash doesn't travel very far and didn't illuminate the roaster machine. This meant that I could use another wirelessly controlled flash that aimed a tight light beam (105 mm setting on the flash light) at the roaster machine. An enormous advantage of using two distinct light sources is that the resulting photo will be far more interesting simply because it is not only a portrait but also a study in lighting conditions.

The shoot done, I then reviewed the ensuing fifteen images on my computer and decided that the shot below had potential.



But there were a few problems with it. A horizontal bar below George's coat was distracting because it was a bright regular shape:



It had to go and so did a point source of light, both elimated using the clone and Exposure brush tools in Adobe Lightroom :



Now to George - fortunately he is a good looking bloke so there wasn't too much to do - eliminate a sunspot on his right cheek and freckle on the bridge of his nose and lighten his left side. The sunspot and freckle elimination took 10 seconds using the clone tool in Adobe Lightroom.


The lightening of his face was more complicated because as human beings, we are very diligent when scanning faces and the slightest fudging is apparent. I created a virtual copy of the image within Adobe Lightroom and then used the Adobe Lightroom 'fill light' command to lighten the left side of his face until it looked good (which meant his right hand side was over light.


Then I opened the two images as a two layered document within Adobe Photoshop (one correctly exposed for Gorge' right cheek, the other correctly exposed for George's left cheek). I then masked the lighter image and carefully concealed some of the mask in order to expose the lighter image by using a very low opacity brush.





Finally I had an image I was happy with, or was I?



The Develop Module of Adobe Lightroom is able to process your image in different ways using 'User Presets' so I applied some of them to the image hoping that one or more of them might guide me in enhancing the portrait.





Neither of the above two interpretations, 'Antique Lighting' and Faded Elegance', helped me but the next one, 'Direct Positive' did.



I loved how punchy the image became and the background clutter was elimated leaving just George and the roaster machine. But a problem, Geoerge looked about to die from jaundice and the darker side of his face had become almost obscured. I solved the jaundice problem by changing the colour temperature of the image. I lightened George's face using the technique described earlier. Then George's top shirt button was eliminated using the clone technique since it was distracting.

Finally an image I was pleased with. George looks handsome and professional, his creation behind him bathed in a bluish light emphasising his scientific approach to coffee roasting.