Digital Photography Guide

Every person that you photograph is unique. As the photographer, you know that before a shoot you ought to do your homework to be able to capture that uniqueness. Of course you get to know them for a short while before the shoot, and you try to match location to their preferences. But there’s so much more to capturing a unique personality than just location and clothing. How about posing?

Personality and posing go hand and hand. The way that you capture a person “being themselves” is critical to a seamless and perfect portrait. The question is ,how do you match personality with poses?

It’s not a complex science. It’s not an incredible challenge. In fact, breaking down posing and personality comes down to one thing: Body language.

Encarta defines body language as: the bodily mannerisms, postures, and facial expressions that can be interpreted as unconsciously communicating a person’s feelings or psychological state.

A photographer must master the interpretation of body language. Understanding what different poses communicate will enable you to match poses to personality, or even create different “feels” to your portraits (dramatic, subdued, expressive, etc.). Posing then becomes another tool to capture your subjects true “self,” and to create the shot you envision.

Of course, your own interpretation of body language - in past experience and personal preferernces - will help to guide you, as well. Take a look at magazines and posing books. Ask yourself, “What does this pose say to me?” Create a mental arsenal of poses and expressions to draw from, and pull out different ones based on the look and the feel you aim for.

Here is a glimpse into my personal use of combined body language, personality, and posing.

The first model was good natured, expressive, and laid back in an “I’ll take life as it comes” kind of way. We opted for relaxed body language to convey her casual nature, but used the angles of her arms, wrists, elbows, knees and shoulder to give a slightly refined feel to the portrait.

The second model had a combination of unique personality traits – an introverted analytical with personable, extroverted tendencies We wanted the shot to reflect both aspects. Using a stool suggests a studio air, crossed arms express a private stance, but the chin down and piercing gaze speak volumes of personal expression and confidence.

The third model was artist, sweet, and very caring in personality, and had an air of quiet femininity. We wanted this shot to express a these traits, so we used a less-common pose, slightly formal pose to reflect her femininity. Her facial expression and the arrangment of her hair help to communicate in a more introverted way.

The key to interpreting and posing with body language isn’t over-analytizing people. The key is simply to learn to observe quickly, and respond in kind for the shot.

Study in body language is good practice for anyone who wants to develop their ability to create depth and emotion in the look and feel of their portraits. Check out a book on body language, and explore how different poses communicate different things to the observer. Then explore magazines and posing books. Evaluate how photographers create their shots, and if he or she successfully used all the tools for posing and body language at their disposal.

For today's DPNow Picture of the Day, rounding off March 2009, we have a wonderfully quirky self portrait from a talented photographer based in Canada. You, too, could be featured on the DPNow.com POTD, simply register on our discussion forum, netting free gallery space, and the rest is up to you!

Like most things in Photoshop, there are probably a half dozen ways to simulate a sepia tone image. What probably comes to mind when you hear sepia is most likely “old-time” photographs. But why is that so? Well, sepia toning was used for a few reasons, artistic and more prosaic.

True sepia toning began around the 1880s with photographic prints that were exposed to sepia in order to aid in replacing the metallic silver in the photo emulsion with a silver compound. By doing so the developer could change the color, obviously, but also increase the tonal range of the photo. It was also believed that the sepia toning increased the photo’s longevity by replacing the less stable metallic silver. Indeed, a lot of sepia prints remain to this day. Sepia, it turns out, is simply ink extracted from a cuttlefish (the European Common Cuttlefish (Sepia officinalis)), a cephalopod closely related to octopuses and squid!

Many of the sepia tone simulations in Photoshop are not terribly convincing. Some look too much like someone placed a beige filter over the image, without actual tone mapping of the sepia to the shadows, midtones, and highlights. While these are certainly not the only, or necessarily best, ways to go sepia, I would like to go over some of the ways Photoshop offers for sepia toning, so that you can judge for yourself what method may be best for any given situation.

First, you must start with a black and white or grayscale image. You can accomplish this so many ways digitally, or just shoot in black and white to begin with, so I’ll leave it up to you to pick a method for desaturating your photo.

1. Gradient map adjustment layer

You can open a gradient map layer, and choose an appropriate gradient. This one’s called “light brown” and ships with Photoshop. You can also alter the standard maps, or create a new, custom gradient map pretty easily. I set the layer’s opacity to 55%. Try changing the gradient map layer blend mode to overlay or soft light. If you go to soft light, you can increase the layer’s opacity for a more intense effect. This blend mode seems to help map the tones even more effectively.

2. Photo filter adjustment layer

This adjustment layer even comes with a filter named “sepia.” You definitely have to tweak the density level. It might help to play with the layer’s opacity and blend modes, as in method 1).

3. Black and white adjustment layer

The black and white adjustment layer first became available in Photoshop CS3. It’s an excellent way to make a black and white image, because not only can you adjust the intensity of the tones with color sliders, but since it’s applied as a layer adjustment, it doesn’t actually alter the image’s pixels, and can be changed or deleted at any time. When you open this adjustment, there is a checkbox for “Tint.” If you check this, you can create a sepia look by clicking the small color box next to the check box, and picking a color you find close to sepia. You can’t blend this tint as easily as with some other methods, but the nice part is the ability to further modify your black and white settings, after the sepia tint is applied.

4. Color balance adjustment layer

You can even use a color balance layer to simulate sepia. Using a black and white image in the RGB color mode, I just added some yellow and red to the midtones. Make sure your image isn’t in Grayscale mode, or you won’t be able to use this option, since there’s technically no color to balance!

5. Hue/saturation adjustment layer

Open the hue/saturation layer along with your desaturated image, choose the “Colorize” check box, and the layer will allow you to apply a tint. Choose a hue closest to what you like, and lower the saturation.

6. Curves adjustment layer

You can even use curves to simulate sepia toning! Most commonly it’s used for control over contrast, but open the curves adjustment layer, and click on the little pull-down menu so you can adjust curves for the individual RGB channels. Choose the green channel and pull the curve slightly below the midline, more or less in the center of the grid. This will increase the magenta in the image, and decrease the green. Similarly, choose the blue channel and pull the line down a bit more to increase yellow, and decrease blue.

7. Solid color layer

Adding a solid color adjustment layer is not something I often do in Photoshop. But it’s an easy and editable way to tint an image. Open a new solid color layer on top of your image, and the color picker will automatically open. Choose a color to represent your desired tint and click OK. Now have some fun, and tweak the solid color layer’s opacity and blend modes. Don’t leave the blend mode at normal, or the image will look very murky. Your best bet will most likely be soft light or overlay, as these two map tones nicely into an image.

Creating a duotone in Photoshop can get you even closer to simulating a good sepia tone. But there are two reasons I’m not presenting it here. One, there’s already a great tutorial on duotones right here at Convert Duotones in Photoshop. Second, making a duotone requires some “no-turning-back” operations, like discarding color info, that are best avoided if possible.

There you have it. Seven ways to sepia, and I’m sure you can discover more. Personally, I’m leaning towards using the black and white adjustment layer to remove color, and then creating a solid color adjustment layer above it all to add the sepia tone. This gives you a lot of flexibility. The black and white adjustment layer makes fine tuning your tones easy, and can always be undone and tweaked in the future. The solid color layer lets you change the tint at any time also, and you can more completely control the opacity, and blend mode, of the sepia tint. Best of all, no cuttlefish were harmed in the making of this article.

Last update (31 November’08):
- Review by DevHardware

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