There are no raw files left of the pictures on this page and no photos from the set, and I am not going to stage either. Instead I show what can be read from the finished pictures: what my look does to a photograph, where the light came from and how a picture is built. Everything here is a reconstruction, and each part says how it was made.
01The look
Drag the handle across the picture. On the right is the finished photograph, as I delivered it. On the left is a neutral development: contrast out, blacks lifted, color pulled back, the color cast evened out. That is roughly what a picture looks like before I start making it mine.
The neutral version is not a raw file. I calculated it back from the finished photograph for this page, with the same settings for all five pictures. So it shows how much of a picture the look accounts for, not how the camera saw it.
The light was already soft and came from the front. The look pulls the background into teal, leaves the skin bright and warm, and presses tulle and feathers into black until face and hands are what remains.
02Lighting sketches
A lighting sketch is a view from above: where the subject stands, where the camera, where each light. I drew these afterwards, from what the picture itself gives away — where the shadows fall, how hard their edges are, where the highlights sit. They are reconstructions, not records. There is no camera data, because the image files no longer contain any.
What the picture gives away
The shadow under the nose falls straight down and both cheeks are equally bright: the key light stood centered in front of the face and a little above it, large and soft. That the neck and hands stay bright as well points to a fill from below.
The idea
A face surfacing from the dark. Everything else was meant to disappear into fabric and shadow.
What the picture gives away
The face is softly lit from the right of the frame and the shadows fade out gently. From behind on the left, a violet light grazes shoulder, back and hair. It comes from behind her, or the color would lie on the face as well.
The idea
Two colors on one skin: warm where she looks into the camera, cool where she turns away.
What the picture gives away
The face is lit softly from the front at an angle, and the suit falls into black. Behind the head a bright glow sits on the background and fades towards the sides: a small light of its own on the background, separating head and shoulders from it.
The idea
Black on black only works if the outline comes away from the ground somewhere.
What the picture gives away
The highlights sit on the rims of the plates and on the top edge of the pancakes, and the shadows fall forward to the right: the light came low from behind on the left, as from a window. The front of the stack is not black even so — something bright filled it in.
The idea
Backlight makes food three-dimensional: every edge catches a rim of light.
03Composition
There are no storyboards for these pictures. They are built all the same, and that can be traced: here are the lines I order a picture by — thirds, vanishing lines, curves, light and dark masses.
The edges of the jetty run towards one point on the horizon, and the horizon sits close to the upper third. Two thirds jetty and sea, one third sky: the eye walks the whole way out once.
The river draws a curve through the frame that the eye follows: down from the top right, round the bottom and up again on the left. The horizon sits high so the bend gets room, and the dark forest at its center is the resting point.
One axis and two wings that close towards the center. The building in front frames the tower behind it, and the curves of the façade lead to it from both sides.
The picture is made of three dark areas — clouds, forest, foreground — and two light ones: the break in the sky and the castle. The path leads from the bottom into the center, where light and dark meet.
04Color
For me a look does not come from one picture but from many. When I sort my work by color and light, families form, and my LUT collections grew out of them. The swatches under each group are measured from the five pictures above them.
The last hour before sunset, lamplight and warm wood.
Measured from the five pictures
Blue hour, water, glass and storm: cool surfaces in which a light looks all the brighter.
Measured from the five pictures
The moment the sky tips into violet, and artificial light that takes up the color.
Measured from the five pictures
Tell me what you have in mind: a portrait, a space or a free project. The inquiry commits you to nothing.