Dodging Faces

clayne · Aug 20, 2009

It seems that every time I try to dodge a face that's unfortunately been obscured by a shadow (not entirely obscured, I can see the detail in the neg and at shorter exposures) or otherwise underexposed it never looks totally natural.

Is there something going on with respect to non-linearity in both film and paper curves that make it difficult to just "shift" tones in such a way that it will look completely natural? I'm not trying to dodge facial features such that they're a stop brighter, at most 1/4 stop or so.

When I say unnatural, it's almost as if the contrast drops and just looks "dodged," as one way of explaining it. One thing I've found that seems to help is to dodge in a way that follows the natural line of light and/or facial features - such that it doesn't just look like an across the board lift in exposure.

If I just shorten exposure overall, I end up having to deal with less than max black and base fog getting in the way. If I grade up the contrast to get around this, I end up affecting the subject's facial features in a less than pleasant way (contrasty, dark eye features, etc).

I probably just need more practice.

Vaughn · Aug 20, 2009

Dodge the face, than burn back with a slighly higher filter?

Vaughn

Jon Shiu · Aug 21, 2009

You might also try dodging with a small piece of No. 5 filter on a wire.

Jon

ooze · Aug 21, 2009

I use Vaughns method and it does make a difference. For example, dodge for 1/3rd of the total exposure, and then burn back with grade 5 for 1/5th of that exposure.

Marcus S · Aug 21, 2009

I often pre-expose the paper first. This tends to improove highlights considerably as well lighten faces in better proportion to the rest of the image. You will have to use a little higher contrast filter to maintain good contrast.

To pre-expose: set the lens to the smallest aperture.
Crank the enlager head to the highest position.
Without a negative, expose several small pieces of paper and lay a coin on each piece, for 1,2,3 etc. until you see the outline of the coin very faintly when the paper is developed.
Note the time of the longest exposure where the coin is still not visible. Use that time to pre-expose the sheet you will be using. After that, use it as normal.

It is quite simple and highly rewarding using this method.

Marcus

clayne · Aug 21, 2009

marcus: How would pre-flashing help improve my highlights? The issue is that part of the face is shrouded by a hat and ended up darker than expected. Highlights are what I'm looking at improving, not lowering.

One thing I realized that might be making this more difficult than necessary, with this particular neg, is that it's relatively underexposed and I'm competing with base fog. It seems that when I dodge up the face, it takes the fog with it and I end up with this "flat" look.

Last night I tried a couple of quasi-split-grade suggestions from the previous replies. I can't say it came out any better. I kind of got tired of dealing with the print and just exposed slightly shorter at grade 5 to brighten things/punch in the blacks and called it a day as I don't think I can get around the base fog+underexposed issue.

Vaughn · Aug 21, 2009

Clayne -- I think that you have come up against the fact that one can't beat a good negative...it is a heck of a lot easier than trying to "fix" a bad one! Or as Britt once said to a complaining Hotel-keeper's daughter (Oregon, 1880's), "If you want a photograph of a pretty face, you have to bring one with you."

Vaughn

clayne · Aug 21, 2009

Vaughn said:
Clayne -- I think that you have come up against the fact that one can't beat a good negative...it is a heck of a lot easier than trying to "fix" a bad one! Or as Britt once said to a complaining Hotel-keeper's daughter (Oregon, 1880's), "If you want a photograph of a pretty face, you have to bring one with you."

Vaughn

Haha, yep.

I might try one last attempt at burning just the face at a lower grade vs the rest at a higher grade.

It's not that I can't get the highlights to come out, it's that max black heads for the hills while doing it. But yes, agreed. Pushed neg, underexposed, Rodinal, etc.

Sirius Glass · Aug 21, 2009

Vaughn said:
Clayne -- I think that you have come up against the fact that one can't beat a good negative...it is a heck of a lot easier than trying to "fix" a bad one! Or as Britt once said to a complaining Hotel-keeper's daughter (Oregon, 1880's), "If you want a photograph of a pretty face, you have to bring one with you."

Vaughn

I once took photographs of a very old and wrinkled woman. She wanted a print with no wrinkles. I ended up taking a stocking and folding over several times and used a cigarette to burn holes in the stocking for the eyes. I put the folded and burned stocking under the enlarger lens ... she loved the photograph.

Remember: The customer is always right!

Steve

Vaughn · Aug 21, 2009

Steve, I believe Britt was the only photographer in the county at the time, but even old EW finally posted a sign "No Retouching" in Carmel.

I tried the stocking routine with a negative of my parents...could not get it to work. After 3 or 4 tries, I realized that it can not work when contacting an 8x10 negative! One of my finer moments!LOL!

Vaughn

Sirius Glass · Aug 21, 2009

Vaughn said:
I tried the stocking routine with a negative of my parents...could not get it to work. After 3 or 4 tries, I realized that it can not work when contacting an 8x10 negative! One of my finer moments!LOL!

RAOTFLMAO!!

Steve

Marcus S · Aug 22, 2009

Clayne: in my experience, when I work with pre-exposed paper it becomes slightly more sensitive to light as well. Faces are slightly lighter while highlights are better defined.
For a shadow on the face, I would try to compromise and dodge the area only slighty. It might improove the image without looking to unnatural.

Vaughn · Aug 22, 2009

Sirius Glass said:
RAOTFLMAO!!

Steve

I don't even have the excuse of using a joint to burn out the eye-holes...:rolleyes:

Vaughn

archer · Aug 22, 2009

Dear Steve;
I know just how you felt when your sitter said "no wrinkles". I have always refused portrait commisions from clients who request retouching but I believe diffusion is an acceptable technique in some circumstances however I would never use it to alter the character of the image. I believe your use in that case was very appropriate If you believed it was. I only mention this because some clients are tryants but I'm the one with the camera. I often quote Goya when the King of spain complained that his portrait was unflattering. " Your Majesty, flattery is a mask and a mask is a lie. In one hundred years the mask will fade and the lie will die but the truth will become beauty and live with you forever." The King appointed Goya the royal painter and never complained again. Then there is that old saw, I can't remember it's source, where a sitter was complaining that thier portrait didn't do them justice and the exasperated photographer replied, "madam you don't require justice you require mercy".
Denise Libby

lloyd · Aug 22, 2009

You might also try dodging with a small piece of No. 5 filter on a wire.

this is the way to go--also can use a blue roscoe filter, so not to have to cut up your vc filters. this works well for light face dodges; David Vestal has mentioned it in his writings.

Maris · Aug 22, 2009

I try not to dodge faces because the results look artificial if it is overdone. In practice a 30% dodge is about the limit before the yuk factor cuts in so I try for 25%. Here's how:

Cut a new dodger for every face and make it 1/4 the size of the face. Now dodge for the entire exposure and the face automatically gets 75% of the main exposure! Of course be careful in guiding the dodger around the hairline and neck line, keep it moving, and give yourself enough exposure time (say 15 seconds) for good blending of the effect.

If you ever have to do multiple portraits all of which require dodging, and they have to be consistent, making a custom dodger is not too much trouble.

clayne · Aug 22, 2009

Maris said:
I try not to dodge faces because the results look artificial if it is overdone. In practice a 30% dodge is about the limit before the yuk factor cuts in so I try for 25%. Here's how:

Cut a new dodger for every face and make it 1/4 the size of the face. Now dodge for the entire exposure and the face automatically gets 75% of the main exposure! Of course be careful in guiding the dodger around the hairline and neck line, keep it moving, and give yourself enough exposure time (say 15 seconds) for good blending of the effect.

If you ever have to do multiple portraits all of which require dodging, and they have to be consistent, making a custom dodger is not too much trouble.

Thanks Maris, this is what I was mainly referring to. As you've hinted at - I've noticed dodging "with the contour" to seem a lot more natural and preferable.

Is it the fact that in a way dodging "flattens" the various tones (as brights go up they eventually become more near each other) that makes it look artificial?

Maris · Aug 24, 2009

Yep, that light waxy cadaverous look rarely goes over well!

kompressor · Aug 24, 2009

clayne said:
marcus: How would pre-flashing help improve my highlights? The issue is that part of the face is shrouded by a hat and ended up darker than expected. Highlights are what I'm looking at improving, not lowering.

You can try to adapt this technique: http://www.tmax100.com/photo/pdf/makingofalargeprint.pdf

Saganich · Aug 24, 2009

Once rather then dodging the entire face I dodged the eyes only. It turned the darker face into more of an asset in that case, but, there was enough contrast to begin with.

LorenzoM · Aug 25, 2009

A face obscured by shadow is not only dark: it is above all flat.
Dodging it can make it lighter, but often gives you a pale, lifeless gray.
You could try to decrease (or, in case, eliminate) dodging, and improve highlights on the face with local bleaching.

Lorenzo

sly · Aug 25, 2009

Split grade printing! This is a situation where it really comes in handy. Dodge the face a bit while using the 00 filter. You might have to burn in a bit with the 5, but I find I don't usually have to. You don't end up with that flat unnatural-looking patch.

Tony Egan · Aug 25, 2009

If the face is big enough I try to limit the grade 5 burn to the eyebrows, eyes, nostrils etc where you want the local contrast of the face to be as consistent with the rest of the print as possible. Getting some true blacks in those key features can make a world of difference. The downside of grade 5 burns of course is the whole face can look very grainy in comparison to other areas but its a matter of thinking through the "least worst" outcome.

David A. Goldfarb · Aug 25, 2009

For most of the history of photography professional portraits have been retouched--it's just part of the genre--and much of that retouching has been done on the negative, preferably with larger negatives.

One effect of working with pencil and knife on the face on a large neg is that the highlight values are often brought up about a stop and contrast increases. This is usually easy to see in Hurrell's portraits, because he would use powdered graphite to smooth the appearance of the skin, consequently pushing up the highlights on the face. Children's portraits from the era of slow plates are often good examples, because it was hard to keep them still enough for a natural light exposure, so you might see some motion in the hands and feet, but blurry lines in the face (sometimes the hands as well) would have been sharpened with a knife on the emulsion side of the plate, and pencil retouching may have been used to "dodge" the face in a very controlled way.

archer · Aug 26, 2009

Dear David;
I agree that through most of the history of professional portrait photography, retouching has been done to flatter the sitter and that is where I have major differences with the practice. Retouching to enhance tonality or component seperation or even to correct minor distractive elements that do not reflect the character of the sitter, are far from altering the intent of the portrait. It was Hurrell's job to create a fantasy of subjects whose lives and careers depended on them remaining, to the public, fantastic, perfect, and larger than life in every way. Those people, movie stars, were almost never seen in public without their image support, especially the way they presented themeselves as something apart. I don't have any problems with that type of portraiture. I love Hurrell's work for what it is, a fantastic rendition of fantastic people and done beautifully and very creatively. I have a real problem with people like Cecil Beaton whose clumsy attempts to flatter the Royals and other upper crust sitters, with poorly executed retouching, were done for no other reason than the vanity of both the sitter and the photographer. When I look at the majority of portraits of Abraham Lincoln, especially the portrait taken on his last day of life, there is no doubt about the toll the presidency had taken on him. Now I ask you, would that truth be revealed, had Brady retouched the deep set eyes, the deep furrows and lines earned by the years in that office dealing with the death of a child, the deaths of hundreds of thousands of men and the burden of depression and a neurotic wife? Please remember that Matthew Brady was primarily a portrait photographer and we can be thankful that his most important sitter let him show the truth to us all. Lincoln truly inhabits that work and we don't have to wonder what he was like. He lives in his portraits.
Denise Libby

Dodging Faces

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