Tim Burton meets Tony Hawk

[schmoo]

I had a really great time shooting this young model yesterday. I've never worked with a model who had significant experience before so I was kind of apprehensive, but he was so personable, polite, professional, and just all-around a good guy and so easy to work with. One hour turned into four and it was more like hangin' with friends than a shoot.

Not only a model, he's an accomplished skateboarder. And he wanted something Tim Burton-esque, so what better than gnarled trees and stripes?



I have to get working on processing the rest of these, but this one (the very last take of the day) I just had to grab first. More to come.

Thanks for looking!

[catspaw]

I cannot wait to see the rest of these

[Richard]

Hah! Great shot, Steph. The tree is reminiscent of Burton, but maybe needs to be a little darker and spookier to really get the effect.

[Hackbone]

Very cool!!

[marlof]

As a Burton fan, I really like this image. I can see how some post processing would make it even more Burtonesque. Somehow the two oranges marks in the sole of his left shoe bother me a tiny bit, since they take away from the black and white theme in the person. But anyhow, a lovely shot!

[Nikolai]

Great stuff, Steph!

[schmoo]

Thanks for the comments! Richard and marlof - any suggestions on changing the PP? I'm not too experienced in doing anything more heavy-handed than some curves tweaking so if you (or anyone) have ideas I'm all ears

[Angelo]

schmoolicious!!!!

kinda reminds me of:

careful - not work safe - nude on board

[Llywellyn]

Very cool!

Burton brings to mind two processing styles in my head: bright and poppy (a la Willy Wonka) or cool and dark (a la Sleepy Hollow/Sweeney Todd). Yes, I'm a total Depp fangirl...

I think your image is more the bright-and-poppy-but-twisted-Beetlejuice phase, so I'd suggested a slight warming filter and darkening of the background (perhaps saturating that tree, too) to make your model really jump out from the image.

Can't wait to see the rest!

[Richard]

Originally Posted by Angelo

schmoolicious!!!!

kinda reminds me of:

careful - not work safe - nude on board

Ang: That's a great pic...I hadn't seen it before.

Schmoo: I don't have ready access to any Burton films right now, so I am relying on memory--a dicey proposition. Dark and spooky is what you need, but you can't let the subject become too dark, so you would need to do some masking. I would start with a vignette to darken the edges and a curve layer to reduce the overall brightness. Then maybe try duplicating the background and putting it in color burn mode. You might need to desaturate it after that. If you could do a rough selection of the tree branches and give them an outer-glow layer style, that might lend some spookiness.

On the other hand, it's a great shot as is, so I don't know that it would really be worth all the hassle--especially if you have more great shots from the same session to work on.

Edit: I was writing while Kerry was posting. As you can see, I'm more a fan of the dark ones, but she's correct that the brighter style might be more suited to this one.