In my last post I experimented with a look that is popular in many ads – in particular sports ads. Nike and Adidas ads are loaded with the look as are many others that want to have an intense, gritty look to their photos.

This blog entry documents how I’ve taken my work with the look another step forward. The lighting is the same as the prior post but since the subject is male so I can include a lot more “gritty” into the look. The primary difference in this look and my earlier work with this look is more post processing in Lightroom.  The key to post processing in Lightroom is a lot of the clarity, recovery, and fill sliders. You  also have to reduce the saturation a lot and work with the exposure and black levels to get it right.

I should point out that as far as I’m concerned, Joel Grimes is the master of this technique.  He takes the look up a notch by creating HDR backdrops for his subjects and then composites their portrait into the HDR image.

The lighting setup is the same as in the prior post but here is the picture again for the lights.   The front light was set to F8.0 and the sides were set at F5.6.  I was about 9 feet from the backdrop.

This is a look that I’ll be experimenting with and trying to get “just right”.  Things to improve the image might be little sprayed on sweat.  I’d also like to experiment with some grids for the rear lights to better control where the light falls.  I’ll be tweaking this shot some and eventually attempting to add Joel’s HDR backdrop concept in to the mix so stay tuned for further updates.