The Business:

Photographer Robert Holland does quite a bit of marine photography (something he’s quite good at) and the people at Everglades Boats in Edgewater Florida noticed so through their ad agency (Anson-Stoner out of Orlando) they contracted Robert to shoot a new line of boats for a campaign that so far includes a 58 page catalog, the Everglades Boats website, Magazine Ad’s, Billboards… etc. Robert needed help with the post production so he and the ad agency hired me for the retouching/post-production/pre-press.

The Technical:

The photos Robert took were great and hardly needed any actual “fixes”, most if not all of the work was simply “modifying” the raw image. The CD/AD on the shoot was Tom Macaluso of Anson-Stoner, he had an idea of adding a “color effect” to give the photos a “look” that would hold them together as a whole. To create the desaturated “look” or “mood” I applied countless adjustment layers and tons of masking on those layers until… well, until the image just worked. Some of the images needed over 15 different color adjustment layers while other only needed 3 or 4, that was all determined by the image’s original exposure and lighting conditions.

The other half of my job, and definitely the hardest part, was the major composite work needed to make the images to fit into a predetermined space (brochure, website…). It wasn’t as simple as cropping to the size needed for printing. If the boat worked fine in the original 11″ wide image but for the layout needed to be 27″ wide then I had to create the additional 16″ by stitching together multiple source photos of water, blending or completely replacing the sky and matching colors across the entire scene. To get this done I utilized just about every Photoshop tool I had knowledge of and even had to learn about a few new ones.

The lighter work was all finesse. When a model on one of the boats was wearing jean shorts but needed to be wearing “boat shorts” I had to find the right source image of khaki shorts, wrap them to fit over the jeans, get the colors right and make the light fall on the new shorts just as if they were in the scene. Some other work like this involved removing old motors that are no longer offered as options and replacing them with a newer make and model, raising light poles that were laid down during shooting and flipping fishing rods & reels that were positioned incorrectly in the rod holders.

The last bit of this job was the pre-press. When the catalog went to the printer there were a few issues with colors and exposures not translating correctly to the paper. Luckily I’m pretty much always on call so when the problems arose with a turn around on the adjustments needed right away I pulled my car over on a road trip and worked for over three hours at a Denny’s resturant with free WIFI, that was an experience I will never forget haha.

The Final Product:

Okay, now that you know the back story I’ll leave you with this tiny sample of the completed work. I would love to post more but there’s just too much, so here are a few of my favorites from this job. Also I threw in some examples of how the images are being used by the boat company.

did color work on this one and stretched it horizontally to fit the brochure layout.

added all the water from the front of the boat foreword.

stitched in the image of the swimmers to original boat image.

stretched this out to the left and right and replaced the sky.

this is how the images are being used on the Everglades Boats website.

a preview of the printed catalog. the spread images are 27in wide.

before & after of a banner that was printed over 6-feet tall. The red area in the “before” image is the where I added sky and water for the final. Also I swapped out the motor and the woman’s shorts.

————————The Back————————

Wow, just wow!! Uber talented graphic designer Trevor Wernisch just finished this amazing business card for me. It’s catchy, witty, the color really “pops” and most importantly it’s memorable. Trevor is always up for a new challenge so send him an e-mail and see what he can do for your identity. Many thanks to the T-man for taking my business to the next level with his killer design skills.

UPDATE: It’s been a few months now and this card is already plastered on a bunch of “Great Business Cards” blog posts! Just recently I was even accused by a friend of copying some other card’s design she had seen online, after some searching we discovered it was in fact MY card she had seen haha. Here is a link to one of the blogs using my business card > Link

]]> http://www.oneroomimaging.com/blog/?feed=rss2&p=22 4 http://www.oneroomimaging.com/blog/?p=18 http://www.oneroomimaging.com/blog/?p=18#comments Sat, 26 Apr 2008 21:52:11 +0000 MJ http://www.oneroomimaging.com/blog/?p=18

Another portfolio image from photographer Robert Holland. As always I started this one by cleaning up the scene and removing the obvious blemishes. Next I added some sky from another image that helped to give it a little more of a darker mood. Finally I layered a few different effects I normally use separately and finished it with a golden tint.

ps. robert has a new website with a bunch of great new images… check it out here

These two images are part of Michelle Citrin’s “Red” project. Michelle really went all out for this shoot hiring a makeup artist, a stylist and a few photography assistants. Because of her careful attention to detail and planing the editing process went very smoothly and didn’t require too much detail work.

I just wrapped up this portfolio image for Florida photographer Robert Holland. Robert and I have been working together off and on for the last two years but this is the first time I have retouched one of his images. He wanted this photo to have a calm, surreal, dreamy look and a selective blur. After the initial cleaning I dropped in some blue sky taken from another image and followed that with some skin work to even tones and soften highlights before finally adding the selective blur that was meant to mimic the effect of a tilt-shift lens.

I’ve recently been working with Michelle Citrin, a photography student in her senior year at The Savannah College of Art & Design in Savannah, Georgia. Michelle’s work is very human based and has helped me get some much needed practice working with the human form and all the interesting dynamics skin has to offer. This collaboration has been educational for both of us, Michelle is learning how to shoot and light her images in a way that better helps the retouching process and I’m learning how to communicate to a photographer as to what I need in an image make it successful in post.

There is much more to come, these two images are just the first batch…

Now that the web design is done I will be able to spend more time working on images and enhancing my techniques. If there is new work added to the site you’ll be able to find out about it here as soon as it’s posted.

stay tuned…