Dominique Isserman, Miles Aldridge and seperation

[Quinten]

Hi,

The typical hollywood portrait has this high contrast black and white, I already found out this is no job for softboxes or umbrellas, just 3 or 4 direct lights with low contrast ratios. But there are the bright whites and fairly much shadow detail in many of these portraits while the contrast is quite high. So I started overexposing but it ruined the looks, hard to explain but a 'dirty' print seems the word.
Dominique Isserman usually shoots the style I would love to master, shame there are so little pics from here. Miles Aldridge comes close ,have a look at his B&W'es http://www.milesaldridge.com/

How would I best expose/devolop for such a seperation of grays?

cheers!
Quinten

 

[blansky]

One of the distinct characteristics of "Hollywood Glamour" was that they used hot lights and they have a very sharp fall off from highlight to shadow, almost a straight line fall off. No wrap around effect.

This is not easy to do with strobes. The Norman Fresnel head came close.

So to try to duplicate the look is difficult even when printing with high contrast. If you can borrow or rent a hot light fresnel you will see how easy it is to come close without too much difficulty. Also makeup is an important part as well as retouching because hot lights are not very forgiving at all.

The tech guys here can comment on the tricks in exposure.


Michael

 

[lowellh]

"Head shots" are typically printed with high contrast developer. Use a low contrast print developer for longer scale and less contrast.

 

[Quinten]

A flash or a hot light the same should be possible to do with the direction and the shape of the light right? I've seen one of these arri fresnel lights and it indeed was hard light, for the first time in my life I could see skin under the hear on my head looking at a picture shot with these lights... No make-up covers that, the light just pierced thruw.

Are these fresnel heads some sort of lenses placed in front of the light so it becomes this hard?

cheers!

One of the distinct characteristics of "Hollywood Glamour" was that they used hot lights and they have a very sharp fall off from highlight to shadow, almost a straight line fall off. No wrap around effect.

This is not easy to do with strobes. The Norman Fresnel head came close.

So to try to duplicate the look is difficult even when printing with high contrast. If you can borrow or rent a hot light fresnel you will see how easy it is to come close without too much difficulty. Also makeup is an important part as well as retouching because hot lights are not very forgiving at all.

The tech guys here can comment on the tricks in exposure.


Michael

 

[blansky]

I don't know the engineering qualities of it but a fresnel lens is a concentric circle lens in front of the light that makes it hard and directional. It's characteristics can not be duplicated by simply using a bare strobe with a small reflector.

Not all Hollywood glamour used fresnel lenses as some heads were square and wider but the extreme fall off of the hard lites gave that highlight to dark shadow look.

Heavy makeup was used as well as dark lipstick and eye makeup. This stuff was heavily retouched to make the skin flawless.


Michael