Story

Last September, my mom was diagnosed with breast cancer. As a result, throughout the past 6 months, our family has gone through many changes. One of them being my mom losing her hair due to chemotherapy. However, she has not let it affect her, and has developed many different ways of covering her head. When her Chemo ended, we decided to get photos of all of the styles of hats and scarves she wore on a daily basis. I set up my studio, and shot some pictures of each scarf and hat she has worn. I also got a shot of her simply without hair.

Shooting

I wanted to add a more dramatic look to the photos, so I felt that black and white suited the photos the best. I setup a white sheet, with a strobe behind it, then set up two more strobes, diffused by umbrellas, at 45° angles from the subject. I then used my Canon 50mm f/1.8 to get some nice torso shots of her.

Editing

The editing process was fairly simple, but took some time. First, I selected the photos that would look good in the poster — I tried to not get duplicate styles (read: hats) — and put those in a separate file. After that, I opened them up in Adobe Camera RAW, and processed them. This part was rather easy, as they were all shot at the same exposure because of the controlled light setup in which they were shot.

After processing them in ACR, I did some minor cleanups on the skin, changed all to grayscale, and sharpened them. Finally, I arranged then in a large canvas in photoshop so that it would look good when printed as a poster.

In all, I spend around 12.5 hours on this project, with around 2 ¹/₂ hours shooting, and 10 hours editing and processing.

This first photo of Jared is probably my favorite of all of them. He is rather serious in the photo; he is showing a different side of him that we don’t normally see.

Above: Sadii Link, Brandon DeSimone, Stephen Sturges, Chris Shoup.

In the above photos, I feel that I captured a different side of the subjects, with the exception of Brandon: he is acting crazy as usual. The photos seem more serious that normal, but I think that these turned out way better than my first attempt at the Avedon style photos.

Over the week, I shot hundreds of photos, and ended up editing many of them. As a result, I spend many many hours on this project, probably the most of any other project in the past. Below are some the rest of the photos.

There were a few photos of Michael Camarino in the mix above, he came into the class to deliver something, so I grabbed him and show a few photos. They would most likely be considered posed, so I didn’t feel that they were the best.

All of the photos above seem to be more fun, but there were a few serious ones mixed in. I feel it provides for a good balance between seriousness and humor.

Finally, I felt that this project wouldn’t be complete without some self portraiture. So I went home and shot a few of myself with my borrowed lights. The setup was simple- but effective. Basically I set up a white sheet over my closet door, and set a strobe on full power behind it. Then I set up two more strobes on quarter and half power (respectively left to right). Finally, I set my camera on self timer for 10 seconds and waited. I actually (to my surprise) got some good shots. I posted them below.

Technical details:

Although the camera settings varied by a lot, there were a few common attributes: 100 ISO, f/8.0 Aperture, and a shutter speed ranging from 100^th sec. to 160^th sec. All photos were shot with my Canon 50D. The lens was mostly my Canon 50mm f/1.8, but the photos of Jared were with my Canon 28-135mm f/3.5-4.5 as my prime was not available at the time of shooting.

The lighting setup was pretty much the same for all of the portraits though: I had two strobes in front of the subject, with a 1:2 ratio of power, and a nearly full power strobe set up behind a white backdrop so that it would be totally white and washed out.

Finally, in editing, I opened the RAW file, bumped up the black slider, contrast, exposure, and recovery. Then I ran my “Avedon” action which consisted of a desaturate, levels, unsharp mask, and a mild high-pass filter on softlight. Then I added the Hasselblad border, resized to 700px, and saved.

Yes I know that this was posted a little late… but I spent nearly my whole weekend processing the photos (all of my free time friday, saturday, and part of sunday – I had to split it with my senior paper). There were many photos that I processed that I didn’t post. My computer was running nearly all day running photoshop actions, etc. Apparently it takes a lot of computing power to do this Avedon style. Please forgive me for the tardiness, but it was seemingly unavoidable as I couldn’t make my computer run any faster.

Other images from the project (contact sheet), and a sample of the unedited images (before and after):

© 2009 Scott Sturges

This first photo really turned out the best. I admit, it was used in the competition this week… but I liked it the best of all of my Avedon Photos. I have gone in and edited it a little more. I reduced the Unsharp Mask on the photo, as I was a little annoyed at how sharp it was. Then I found a border that was similar to Avedon’s Hasselblad’s frame.

This photo was taken in the school’s photo studio. I forced Brandon to be a model, and started taking some photos of him. He really wasn’t cooperating very well, Emily started throwing National Geographic magazines at him. His reaction was perfect. I feel that I accurately captured his emotions toward being abused in such a way – he was quite shocked to have magazines thrown at him… I would too after all.

This photo was probably the best of all of the photos taken that day, it was the only one that displayed his reaction, stopped motion, and was sharp. There are a few others available below for your viewing pleasure.

EXIF:

• Shutter: 1/160^th
• Aperture: f/7
• ISO: 100
• Camera: Canon 50D
• Lens: Canon 50mm f/1.8

© 2009 Scott Sturges

This second photo is of Emily Custer. We needed to do some Avedon-style photography… so we took photos of each other. This one was also taken in the studio, under the same circumstances.

I really didn’t do too much editing to this one. Simply a RAW conversion, De-saturation, Unsharp Mask, and added a border.

This photo – I feel – really shows who Emily is. No, it doesn’t show shooting deer, but it seems to show emotion and personality. This was just one shot of many, but this one really seemed to show who she is. Maybe I’m just over-analyzing the photo though.

Finally, there are some more of her below with the ones of Brandon and the contact sheet.

EXIF:

• Shutter: 1/200^th
• Aperture: f/7.1
• ISO: 100

Out-takes:

At one point, she was a little bit peeved at the photo shoot, so Emily flipped me the bird. While editing, she saw the image and liked it and said that it reminded her of the Johnny Cash photo of him flipping the bird. So… I edited it and came out with the result below. It turned out decent, especially for a first time doing something of the sort. The image below is hidden for the sake of censorship. The original is included below next to the contact sheet and the one of Mr. Cash is side by side once you click the “hidden” image below. No… it’s not exactly the same, but it’s good in it’s own light.

Oh, and if it wasn’t incredibly obvious, my inspiration was none other than the great…Richard Avedon.

Richard Avedon was truly an amazing photographer. Many of us have seen his photos and never realized whose they were. The photo to the left is one of my favorites from him. It is Charles Chaplin right before he was exiled from the United States for “un-american”/communist activities. The way he is acting in the photo is simply humorous.

This second photo is right up there with the Chaplin photo. The chances of taking this photo are about 1 in 1,000,000. The emotion on her face along with the snake’s tongue create a nearly perfect photo from composition to subject matter. This photo is simply amazing.

The photo to the left interests me in a strange way. The photo is rather creepy, they guy looks like an axe murderer or something… maybe not. But the way this photo looks draws it out of a crowd of photos, which is the goal of the photographer… to make the photo stand out. Thats what this photo does perfectly. When someone sees this photo, they have to get a closer look to see what it is about. I am not entirely sure what this guy does, but it looks scary.

Finally, this photo of Marilyn Monroe had to be included. This photo is probably one of Avedon’s most famous photos. This photo shows her emotion at the time of capture perfectly. She was tired from the photo-shoot, and Avedon captured her facial expression and body language in such a way that you can feel exactly (or close to) as she does when you look at this photo.

Avedon started out in the fashion photography industry, and became one of the greatest portrait photographers ever in the United States.