50 http://www.digitalcameraworld.com
THE MISSION
Capture animal
portraits and
convert them to
black and whiteTime needed
One hourSkill level
AdvancedKit needed- Tripod
- Telephoto lens
Go mono with wildlife
Dan Mold uses natural light and Photoshop trickery to produce moody
studio - qualit y mono animal por traits to give them a fine -ar t feel
his month I’m going to
show you how to give
your wildlife images a
high-end studio look
and you won’t even need
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spaces to pull it off. It’s just
as well really... animals
aren’t known for sitting
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let alone in front of a
camera in a studio!
Instead, we went to Slimbridge
Wetland Centre in the UK, and
made use of the harsh single light
source from the sun to create deep
shadows and bags of contrast.Then it’s just a case of using
software to complete the low-key
effect by converting the image to
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Soft light is often favoured for
people and pet portraits, but a
harsh single light source, like from
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create low-key images with oodles
of mood and atmosphere.
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shooting against a dark
background and setting your
metering mode to Spot metering
to make the animal well exposed,
but leaving the background dark.
Just ensure the sun is out and not
hidden behind any clouds as thiswill diffuse the light and act like
a massive softbox, making it
impossible to get the low-key look.
The rest of the ruse is
completed in post-production.
We’ll be using the Adobe Camera
Raw plug-in built-in to Photoshop
CC to work up the mono result.
So you’ll be learning how to
capture amazing wildlife pictures
in camera and how to edit them
for maximum impact back at your
computer, when you return home
from your shoot.
The end result is a very
convincing image that appears
to have been photographed with
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