RAW WAR1
Crop square
to focus on
the expression
In Adobe Camera Raw, I tick the two
boxes in the Lens Corrections tab
to minimise fringing and distortion.
Suppressing chromatic aberration
is less important for black-and-
white images, but there’s no
harm in making your starting
point as good as it can be.
With the housekeeping done,
I pick the Crop tool, and set it to the
1:1 aspect ratio for a square crop.
This should work well, as I’m after
the look of 6x6 medium-format
film. I drag this over the image,
restricting the crop to the model’s
face and torso, then rotate it to get
a strong ‘Dutch tilt’. If you try this
on one of your own shots, don’t be
half-hearted about it, or it will look
like a mistake. Instead, go for a big
tilt that leaves the natural horizon
in the region of 30-45 degrees.
With the crop decided upon, it’s
time to head over to the Basic
tab for the next steps.T
his is a great portrait shot. What’s interesting is that
it has the potential to go in all kinds of different
directions, depending on the desired end use. The
graffiti-strewn backdrop gives an edgy urban flavour
to it, so it could work well as a contemporary fashion
shot, but the model’s relaxed pose and eyes-off expression could
also see it working as a documentary-style shot.
Although the vibrant hues could easily sway me towards a colour
finish, I’m going to focus on the reportage element, and work it up as
a gritty mono portrait. I want to focus on the model’s expression, so
I will make a pretty extreme crop in square format, and then convert
to mono. I want lots of detail in the frame, so I will push the tones
quite hard to get the gritty, high-contrast look. Finally I’ll add some
grain and a dark border to keep an old-school, reportage feel.Warrior 2
Jon Adams
84 DIGITAL CAMERA^ MARCH 2020 http://www.digitalcameraworld.com
Boost contrast
for a gritty
look
Crop square
on a ‘Dutch
tilt’ to focus
on model’s
expression
Convert to
mono and
film grain