Dramatic Image Transformation!
July 17th, 2009
The final, "Stage Four" image after Eric's hard work!
One of the very rewarding aspects of my job at Myers Creative Imaging is that I get to work with very talented and dedicated people every single day. We have a staff of six people at the studio, each excellent at what they do, who work well together in servicing our clients, and in supporting each other at the same time! Alright, enough of the mushy stuff.
I’m taking this opportunity to show off Eric Barbehenn’s talents a little bit. Eric is sometimes known by us, affectionately, as “the guy behind the wall,” and might not often be seen, but is responsible for many great things! Eric is the full time digital image retouching artist that we have on staff. Of course he manages other things around the studio, too, but retouching is really his thing!
Often times, in the professional photography world, the role of the retoucher becomes a key factor in the realization of an art director’s or photographer’s vision. Sometimes, only so much can be done “in camera” by the photographer, and it’s up to people like Eric to take the reins and bring the image to a new level.
In this particular case, Eric had done some work on an image that I had created back in the winter months for Harris Corporation. The scenario I had shot in January had depicted emergency first responders “on the scene,” and would be used in trade magazines to advertise the encrypted radio communications systems that Harris engineers and manufactures here in Rochester.
Eric had spent some time playing around with some tone mapping techniques recently, and seemed to think that this image could lend some interesting results. He felt that the original image, while very nice, could be pushed to carry a far more dramatic visual message that spoke of the often harsh and difficult conditions that first responders and their equipment are subjected to.
Without giving away Eric’s detailed secrets, I can walk you through the basics:
Stage One, the image in its original state, straight off the camera.
Right off the camera, the Stage One image.
Stage Two, some real boosts in contrast, especially in the shadow end, and some light falloff around the perimeter occurs.
Stage Two.
Stage Three, we see a further contrast push, as well as some selective desaturation.
Stage Three.
Now pay attention to the image shown at the beginning of this post, because Stage Four gets really cool! Eric made it snow! Now, he hadn’t merely selected snow from another image and layered it in to the existing one. He actually created it from nothing and succeeded in making it look real and believable!
What a great result, and super example of image enhancement!
Camera: Canon EOS 1DS Mk 3.
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