POST PRODUCTION PIN-UPS

Making so-so pictures slightly better.

www.greggcestaro.com For most of Austin Fashion Week my battery charged studio lights were out of commission so, I had to use available light and on camera flash to shoot the events for that week (see Fashionably Austin).  Not exactly what I wanted to go in with for the great potential that was out there, having a good portable bright softbox would have been good for a lot of what I wanted to do, but such is life. A case in point was  the lingerie mixer at Teddy’s for Betty’s boutique, jammed packed with a ton of people and some models wearing some designs from the store.   One of the side rooms had long white canvas shades that made a good back drop, so I got some of the mods to do their thing.  And, I did mine – popped up the little, tiny flash on my camera (click) and just took some quick snaps.  Not so great I thought was my first impression on seeing the original image at home, but could it be better with a a style modification?  Playing with some different styles, Pin-up seemed to be the best based on the fashion and the model’s persona. A Post Production Pin-up Process  using Photoshop requires modifying the image to a clam shell lighting mimic, by dealing with side flash shadows, bumping up midtone highlights and burning down body curves, desaturation, brightness/contrast nudges, and some tweaks on the CMYK channels. Then the usual Photoshop blending, skintone, make-up, rounds out the image. Better? Yeah, I think so, more of a studio look than snap shot, a little more commercial looking too. Would have like to spent more time there with better lighting, though.