Sokolsky Lighting Technique

I've always been a big fan of Sokolsky.

http://www.sokolsky.com

Most of shots have a very distinctive lighting and color pallate. I can't figure out how he is doing it.

The colors are all very strong, but the overall shot is a bit muted.

He's a genius with lighting and a lifetime of experience.

Does anybody have any clues?

I think the colors are very carefully chosen for the shoot, and then I think there is some digital processing going on, probably through the use of adjustment layers. I see quite a variety on the site, so specific examples may help. Also, some of the models have that new-wave (I call it) luminosity to their skin tones---I think another photoshop trick, one I haven't figured out yet. Most of the shots are likely done with a very large light source....maybe a daylight studio, or large diffusers or somethig like a large octodome with a strobe. I will reiterate that everything seems to have been cleaned up and toned, at least to some extent, digitally.

....also, the element of craft is true. ( I WAS reading the "process" section of his "About") If a photographer spends years crafting his look, things are bound to have a distinct look and identity. This cannot be discounted. Experience is a real teacher.
Another would be Albert Watson-- http://www.albertwatson.net

Watson claims to be 99% analog. Keep in mind though....that you are looking at images on the web, and these people are professional image creators. They are going to do what they need to to make their web presence as formidable as their hard-cover portfolio prints. That is why I believe there is a digital element to these images.

If you look at his website you can see quite a wide range of techniques and media reflecting a long career of commercial work, so I don't think you can pin it down to any one thing. It's more that he has enough technical knowledge to make work look like his own whatever the format, lighting possibilities and demands of the art director may be.

It looks like a lot of his work is medium format with fairly neutral films. Some of it is Polaroid--SX-70, and probably films like type 59 in 4x5" or 809 in 8x10". For his market, he would probably have been shooting transparency films in many cases like the Agfachrome 100 of the 1980s, which had a kind of pastel palette, though that muted look today with good microcontrast is probably best achieved with color neg films like Portra 160NC. The closest transparency film would be Astia 100F, preferably in medium or large format.

You could take his workshop. He says he tells all.

I'mm guessing prints in a gallery would look much different than the same images on the web.

I did take a workshop with him a few years ago. Great guy. But he didn't teach us his lighting.

The style that I'm referring to can most easily seen in his spread for French Vogue or or L'Uomo Vogue (On his website - fashion section.)

It almost looks as if he de-saturating the highlights and leaving the rest of the color alone. I know that's probably not it, but is the best way I can describe it.

David - I haven't shot with the Porta 160NC before. I generally stick the Ektachrome 100, How would you compare the two?

Ektachrome 100 is fairly neutral as slide films go, but is still more saturated than Portra 160NC, which is a neg film. Try a search here on "Portra 160NC" and you should find a thread with some examples that I and others have posted when the new updated Portra films came out a couple of years ago and Kodak sent out free samples.

A lot of those have a tungsten film feel. which if shot in day light, or strobe, would of course go blue. I can imagine that correcting this in a very controlled way would cause muted tones, but again, I smell photoshop.

And if he is carefully mixing light sources like he says, this would affect the tonality in strange ways as well. For instance...shooting with tungsten film, lighting the models with tungsten light, but letting a daylight fill spill in to tweak the color balance, would give the overall cool cast I see in many of the images.