Masters Chiaroscuro

'Girl with a Pearl Earring' Johannes Vemeer, 1665,
Oil on Canvas, 46.5x40cm.

2010 'Low wide angle of a footbridge in Liverpool L1 center', Marc Melander, ISO 800, Aperture Av F/1.3, Tv 1/640s 

Wall Display Print

I chose this JPG image of Dennis as the Joker but I needed it to look darker as portrayed in the movie. I opted for the sponge tool to lighten the exposed skin to a more natural appearance. I opted for the burn tool to darken the right side of Dennis's face to a satisfactory consistence. I selected the yellow patch above Dennis's left eye and chose hue/saturation to remove that yellow tinge. I again use the sponge tool to sharpen Dennis's right eye and to saturate the vibrancy in the red lips. I then worked with curves to brighten the right side to Dennis's face. When I was satisfied with the result, I added a white border and a keyline and saved the PSD format image and a Tiff format image ready for printing.

F Stop Aperture Reference

Color Chart Reference

Red          Cyan
Green        Magenta
Blue          Yellow
                Kblack

Self Directed Sky Tower Silhouette

'Sky Tower Silhouette'
ISO 64, F/4.9, 1/550s, AWB
4206x3106cm 3.85MB

Masters at 3 Point Lighting, Gels, Color Temperatures and Filters

Woman in Shed (untitled)
Tracey Moffatt
1989, Cibachrome photograph
103.0x133.0cm

'360 Room for all Colors'
Olafur Eliasson, 2002, Stainless steel, projection foil,
fluorescent lights, wood and control unit
126x321x321inches, 320x815.3x815.3cm

'Penitent Girl' (untitled) Twilight series
2001-2002, digital chromogenic print
48.1x60.2in, 122.2x153cm

Chiaroscuro

Chiaroscuro
It is an Italian artistic term used to describe the dramatic effect of contrasting areas of light and dark in an artwork particularly paintings. It comes from the combination of the Italian word for "light" and "dark."

Nowadays Chiaroscuro applies to a far wider array of dramatic lighting effects, particularly in movies - anything dark and moody with great slashes of shadows, is very chiaroscuro. Film Noir, of the film genres, is the best examples of chiaroscuro. Chiaroscuro remains essentially a technical word, though, and is not often used in everyday conversation - unless you happen to be a film critic of course.

Studio Silhouette

Setting my lighting with yellow gel on my conned backlight bounced off the back wall to simulate the sunset.

The yellow back light bounced off the back wall threw a silhouette of Matarita for my camera. This is the intended shot but......

.....I wanted to add an extra bit of my own touch by adding a diffused very small and low light to highlight her face slightly.

Studio Shoot

Studio Shoot

ISO 100. set large key light on floor to light studio. Meter light reading at 5.6. Set Key Light Soft Box at 5.0 and Fill Light Soft Box at 2.0. We then set up the Back Spot Light to suit and diffused it with honey comb grid and set the light setting 4.5. After several tries at adjusting light positions and pose positions, we achieved our studio set up.

Standard 3-Point Lighting Technique

Three Point Lighting Simulator

Photoshop Channels Tutorial

Tutorials on Photoshop Channels

Print Ready

Original photograph looks reddish

Print ready after working on curves, hue/saturations and colour balance in photoshop. The image looks more natural