The
Mission
- Photograph studio-
quality animal portraits
in natural light
Time
- Four hours
Skill level
- Advanced
Kit needed
- Super-telephoto lens
- Adobe Camera Raw
- Adobe Photoshop
Low-key animal portraits
Mike Harris uses natural light and Photoshop trickery
to produce moody studio-quality animal portraits
Photographing a wild animal in a
photo studio isn’t exactly ethical.
And besides, good luck trying to
get a ring-tailed lemur to sit for a
20-minute shoot! However, it’s
very possible to achieve studio-
quality results using only natural
light and a generous helping of
Photoshop trickery. During a
recent visit to a UK-based safari
park, I made use of the bright
conditions and produced a series
of low-key animal portraits.
Soft light is often favoured for
portraits, but stylized low-keyimages can be produced using a
single light. The harsh directional
sun can somewhat simulate this
by producing strong highlights
and deep patches of shadow.
This can be amplified by shooting
against a dark background,
setting your metering mode
to Spot Metering and using
different values of negative
exposure compensation.
The rest of the ruse is
completed in post-production.
While in Camera Raw you can
add a simple black-and-whiteoverlay, while tweaking the
Contrast, Highlights, Whites and
Clarity. Heading into Photoshop
CC, you can make use of the
editing software’s brush tools to
paint over any stubborn patches
of light that surround the subject.
The final step is to use the High
Pass filter to subtly sharpen the
image, which is particularly
effective at increasing the detail
of fur. The end result is a very
convincing image that appears to
have been photographed under
low-key studio lighting.CREATIVE TECHNIQUES
Project^ two:^ Creative^ techni
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