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Ticking all the boxes at Broadway

Years ago when I was doing sweaty production shoots at tech rehearsals for London’s West End shows, I never thought I’d be asked to shoot a portfolio shot of Tony nominated Broadway stars in New York. So when BroadwayBlack asked to to be involved in their highlight of this year’s black nominees, I didn’t have to think long to say yes. It’s the culmination of so many of the different areas of photography I’ve become interested in over the years. To combine something that’s anthropologically important, culturally current and aesthetically pleasing. As a photographer, that ticks all the boxes.

Light Testing

One way that I gain an advantage in this competitive industry is to maintain a certain standard when it comes to lighting and posing. To achieve this, I love to do lots and lots of light testing.

I live in a large loft apartment in Brooklyn, with a fair amount of space, which means I can easily test from here. Having the opportunity to test before the shoot makes it a lot easier to plan ahead and be prepared.

For a big big job like this where there is celebrity talent, where timing is tight and scheduling is a challenge, I had to plan out my poses, plan out exactly what my lighting setup was gonna be and make sure it worked. There’s a big difference between a lighting diagram jotted down on a napkin and one actually executed in the studio and one that looks good!

So to prep I had my intern and a stylist friend come over and pose patiently while I messed with the light, messed with the angles, messed with the composites, messed with the poses, etc. I wasn’t happy until I got to a point where I felt inspired. A ‘jump-off point’ to finesse on the day.

Light testing gives me a chance to take the pressure off myself, shoot with friends, no clients on set, take my time, let the process take over, explore new things, mess around.

While these aren’t the final poses or exact lighting setup we used on the day, it helped me find my way in the process. I feel it is important here to show my process when I do these group portraits, how much planning goes into it. So while these images are very low-grade composites, not meant for final publication, they really help me and the team to see my vision. I sent this to my producer and the publication to give them an idea and they loved it. I also printed it out to show the talent on set.

To achieve this swiftly and efficiently, I tethered Phase One XF 100 MP straight into Capture One Pro 9, applied my basic colour curves, exported and then composited the images into Photoshop. Because we didn’t know how many nominees would be in the final shot, I did a test with 4 and one with 8 subjects, just to be prepared.

Production

Because of the challenges of scheduling and location (these guys all have shows to perform in, 6 days a week), we couldn’t drag the talent to studios miles away in Brooklyn, we had to stick close to midtown Manhattan. To avoid expensive studio locations, we found a rehearsal space, Pearl Studios, that was close enough to the theatre district. I went and scoped it out, my producer solved the problem of getting 14’ backdrops up to the 12th floor (elevators are too small) and we schlepped a van load of equipment up a passenger elevator.

The backdrop & corresponding floor, sourced from Oliphant, transformed a plain rehearsal space into something a little more visually appealing and befitting the glamorous talent. The space just happened to have a grand piano for us to use, so naturally in it goes. For lighting I used two battery powered Elinchrom ELB 400 packs and my trusty Elinchrom modifiers. We kept it fairly simple, as usual.

Everything was set… Now I just needed to actually shoot!

The shoot

I set the Phase One XF 100 MP on a tripod, marked it down, and started putting together the shot, one subject at a time.

My focus on every shoot is to get all the technicalities out of the way, to focus on making the talent feel comfortable. I tend to start that while they are in hair and make-up. My general rule of thumb is to make some jokes, get them to react in a genuine way, where I feel that they are on the same page as me, to gain trust before the subject even steps foot on set.

First up was LeChanze, who is actually a previous Tony Awardee and agreed to be part of the shoot, to pass the torch to the next generation. She brought her Tony award but I decided not to include it in the shot, I wanted to create a timeless image. Instead I highlighted her by giving her separate backdrop to pose in front of. This elevates her importance in the shot without any pretension.

Then it was Pascal Armand (Eclipsed), Saycon Sengbloh (Eclipsed), Brandon Dixon (Shuffle Along) and Adrienne Warren (Shuffle Along). For each of them, I tried to set the mood by generally being silly, energetic and doing unhealthy amounts of mirroring (demonstrating poses). Below is me doing my best ‘Beyonce in the wind impression’.

We tethered the entire shoot into my laptop, using Capture One Pro 9, replete with the extra-secure jerk-stopping piece of tape on the USB cable.

There’s no feeling quite like showing the subjects the photos as they are coming in. When you know they are good, they see that they are good, they get into the mood and it makes my job easy.

Obviously the end result is very different from the light test, but that’s just how things end up working out. No shoot I’ve ever done worked out exactly to plan, and that’s part of the beauty of photography. I like the result more more, with each person existing in their own space within the image.

To achieve individuality, I interacted with each subject enough to get an idea of the kind of pose that would work for them; for example, that’s how LaChanze’s effortless beauty and Adrienne’s ‘athletic cool’ really shines through. The goal is always to show personality. I want them to feel comfortable, they aren’t models, I want their individual characters to show.

Compositing

For a composite shot like this, the 100 megapixel capability of the Phase One XF 100 MP really shines, it allows me to get a depth of detail that gives us complete control. Compositing people into images is always more complex than it initially appears, we start to get into parallax issues, details not quite matching up, etc. But having pixel depth gives me options.

On tight schedules, options are everything. A complicated composite like this is made much easier because we’re using the best equipment available.

Photographer: Felix Kunze
Production: Dual.Phocus
Make-up: Bob Scott
Hair & Styling: Chloe Chada

Into the shark’s eye

Ever since I first swam with sharks, I wanted to share that experience through my photography. And since I couldn’t bring the sharks into the studio, I brought the studio to the sharks. Watch a BTS video from my trip to South Africa below:

A couple of things made this possible: A solid underwater housing for my camera and the right lights. The housing was developed by a Japanese company. And I invented an underwater strobe system for which I now have four patents. It’s the most powerful underwater lighting setup in the world. I just went out and made it. All my assistants have gotten certified as divers, the same team, and they’ve followed me into the deep. We were all very glad that the sharks couldn’t care less about the lighting.

Today I’m shooting with the Phase One XF IQ3 80 MP system. I’ve now been shooting with Phase One camera systems for about eight or nine years, and over that time there have been a lot of changes – the camera body, the grip, the number of megapixels, the file sizes and speeds of autofocus. It’s great every time they release a new system. I love it. The gear keeps getting better, sharper and faster.

A great example of why using medium format is key: With sharks, everyone’s used to seeing that black eye, it personifies the monster, something that looks so soulless from far away. But recently when I zoomed into the images I’d taken, I was amazed. I could literally see the shark’s iris, see the eye in all its specificity – the same view that I see when I dive with them. It creates this connection, because you can see how almost human they are as they look at you. But no camera ever revealed that until I shot with the 80MP system. Maybe it was the light that was hitting it in a certain way, but it was like, ‘wow, there you go!’ A huge “wow moment.” The technology just delivered the experience in its true form. Something DSLR camera systems simply can’t do.

To get a great image, you need all the elements – lighting, detail, direction, color, composition, shadows … it’s how you use each of them that separates you from the next guy …

One of the big differences between my peers and me is that I do all my own post-production, and I don’t hand stuff off to retouchers – I never have, from the film days, right through when I jumped with both feet into digital around 2002. I love looking deeply into the image. Having that knowledge of post is a huge advantage because I know where I can take it.

I love Capture One Pro 9. Every tech I know uses it because of its workflow and speed. Plus, obviously if you’re working with Phase One gear, it’s the program designed to work with that camera system. I honestly don’t like shooting tethered, it’s like being a dog on a leash, but it is great to be able to look at the images on the screen; you can zoom in and make changes on the fly.

Converting the raw file is the foundation of the look – it’s how I put my fingerprint on the image. Later, I might spend two minutes in Photoshop. It comes down to the kind of detail you can get with Capture One Pro 9, detail in the blacks that you won’t get with Bridge, for example.

Commercial work is great, and I enjoy it, but there’s nothing that compares to working on your own projects. A lot of commercial photographers can forget that and get old and stale just chasing a check. It’s important to do want you love, essential to at least sometimes follow your passion. I wasn’t hired or paid to do the shark project. It was my own project that I was passionate about. It was very fulfilling.

For me, I’d say 90 percent of the time I’m shooting with Phase One; eight percent with my DLSR and two percent with my iPhone. For all my commercial jobs, I’m using Phase One gear. My clients are expecting the biggest file size they can get so they can crop in, or use the images for huge billboards with no loss of quality. When they see the camera, they’re often, like “woah, what is that?” So I spend some time explaining.

If I were to offer any advice to other photographers, I’d say that the most important thing is to shoot. Some people say, “Well, I’m a music photographer or a car photographer, so that’s what I shoot.” But I say, ‘If you’re a photographer, you’re a photographer – you shoot everything!’

Shoot constantly and hone your craft. Shoot things outside your usual subject matter and look back to how that might help you with your usual focus – you might discover ways to translate shooting something new with something you’ve always done. The only way to become a master is to have a camera in your hands on a daily basis.

Bottom line, I’d say, ‘Listen to your own gut.’

Michael Muller’s Sharks. Face-to-Face with the Ocean’s Endangered Predator, has just been published by Taschen. It’s a 334 page hardcover book with two amazing foldouts, filled with hundreds of images that show another side of an awesome creature — one that many have vilified and few have taken time to understand. Readers report being blown away by the details in these images, and we wanted to hear from Michael about this project, about his photography in general and what his advice to photographers seeking to master the craft.

Check out Michael’s website and Instagram:

http://www.mullerphoto.com/

https://www.instagram.com/michaelmuller7/

Phase One Partner of choice Samy’s Camera

Color tools for fashion imagery

Capture One Pro is extremely versatile. It’s always been a powerhouse when it comes to handling RAW images. With Capture One Pro 9, more powerful color tools have become available – so powerful that personally I’ve moved almost all of my color grading to Capture One Pro, versus Photoshop. In this post, I’m going to talk about how I use Capture One to achieve a desired look for fashion and portraits.

To start things off, let’s have a look at the original RAW image of Chelsea in Capture One Pro:

Original image

Luma Curves

Firstly, the hair was a little dark in the shadows so I wanted to slightly bring out the detail without impacting the image dramatically, which is normallt what you would see using the shadow save slider.

Black tone Changes with Luma Curves

Using the Luma curve, I slightly brought up the shadows. The new Luma curve is great since it doesn’t affect saturation. I often use the curve eyedropper tool to pick out the areas on the histogram that I want to affect. In order to reduce the affected areas, don’t forget to lock down elements outside of the area that you are working with.

The change is subtle, but sometimes subtle changes are all you need

Skin tone uniformity

Our model, Chelsea, already has great skin tones. What we want to do is to bring the shadowed skin tones more in line with the well-lit skin tones. To do so, I jumped to Local Adjustments, created a new layer and named it “skin”. From there, I went to the Color Editor and selected the Skintone tab. Here, you want to grab the eyedropper and select an area of skin. I often turn on the “View selected color range” checkbox so I can see exactly which tones I am selecting.

Quick mask with skintone eyedropper

You will notice that we are only selecting her skin tones as the blue background is not showing. This is a great quick mask, however, we do not want to alter her lips. Therefore, I will typically throw a secondary mask on. Make sure you are on the skin adjustment layer and paint away.

More complex mask to remove lips

After writing the post I discovered that with the release of Capture One Pro 9.1. there is actually also a new feature making it possible to transform a color selection into a mask. The feature is called Create Mask from Selection and it would have been very helpful in this case. See more in this tutorial. From 2:30 onward.

Now that you have a great mask, you want to turn up the uniformity slider. This can be found in the Skintone tab, which will blend the tones nicely. Often, I find the tones a little red, so I’ll play with the hue rotation tool to achieve the desired skin tone.

Color Editor for subject isolation

For this particular image, I wasn’t a fan of the blue background. Having the “view the selected color range” check box on gave me the idea to eliminate the blue background. To do this, I used the Color Editor tool and selected a spot on the background with the eye dropper. Make sure to be under the Advanced tab.

You will notice the sampled color appearing in the list and now it’s ready to be adjusted. I pulled down the saturation to -100 to get rid of the blue all together. Moreover, I pulled up the lightness a bit, to brighten the background.

Removal of blue background with the Color Editor Tool

Color Balance Tool for shadows, midtones and highlights

Now that the image is at a good baseline, I played with the colour balance. With the Color Balance tool, you can shift the shadows, midtones and highlights independently on hue, saturation and luminosity.

You can do something sutble… (see below)

Or something drastic… (see below)

Drastic Shadow hue shift

For this particular image I wanted to add just a slight orange to the shadows so I dragged the circle over to the right. You will notice two curves on either side of the large circle. The left is for saturation, and the right is for luminosity. The notch on the circle identifies the hue. So, there are really two ways of approaching this; You can either play around with the small circle in the middle, or dial it with the notches to your liking.

Adjustment Layers for eyes

Furthermore, I noticed that the eyes could use a little light, so I jumped back into the adjustment layers and masked the eyes, turning up the shadow recovery just a bit..

Ahhhh, just right

For this example, I didn’t adjust the mis-tones or highlights, only the shadows.

Bring up the shadow in the eyes with the adjustment layer

The final result

And that’s basically it! It doesn’t seem like we’ve done much to this RAW file, but let’s review the before and after pictures below:

Final RAW conversion comparison

As you can see. we now have an image that is more isolated (removal if the blue background), with more consistent skin tones as well as a nice push to the warm tones in the shadows.

This RAW image is ready to be exported into photoshop for retouching.

I hope this quick tutorial helps you on your next portrait or fashion shoot.

How to apply lens correction without lens metadata

When using a DSLR camera or a Phase One camera, lens metadata information will automatically be added to the RAW file. From the lens metadata, Capture One Pro 9 will know if it is a supported lens and, in case it is, automatically apply lens corrections to the image.

When using an older manual lens, for instance via a simple adapter, or perhaps using a technical camera, there will be no metadata describing the lens.

Other data like the aperture used for the exposure of the image is also missed, so lens correction will not automatically take place.

Using a technical camera with lens movements makes it even more challenging when lens corrections need to be applied. Despite not having proper lens metadata in the RAW file, the Lens Tool in Capture One Pro 9 still has some options for applying lens corrections.

Using a 100% mechanical lens

In the first example, I have been using a 100% mechanical and manual lens on a Phase One Camera and the raw file does not contain any information on lens name, focal length or aperture. Therefore, I have to make some notes or simply use my smartphone to document the shoot.

When you load the image into Capture One Pro 9 and look at the Lens Tool, it will just show a Generic lens profile without any default corrections.

Image will show up with a generic lens profile as no lens metadata has been savned into the RAW file

The lens used for this image shows a bit of barrel distortion, as well as some chromatic aberration, so I want to correct these artifacts.

For this image, I was using an older Phase One 45mm TS f/3.5 lens, which is a lens supported by Capture One Pro 9. To select the lens profile, I will have to pick it from the ‘lens profile list’ under ‘Phase One lenses’:

After the right lens has been selected, the image will automatically be corrected for Chromatic Aberration and distortion. If I had been using a lens that was not supported in Capture One pro 9, I would still have the possibility to do a chromatic aberration correction. If you would like more details on how to do this, read the following blog post:

https://learn.captureone.com/fixing-chromatic-aberration-in-macro-images

Fixing distortion

When fixing distortion on a non-supported lens, you will have to try if either the Generic or the Generic pincushion lens model can fix it. For many lenses, you can actually bring down the distortion to a level where it is not noticeable any more, by using these generic lens profiles.

Furthermore, I will correct the keystone. Since this image has a dominant rectangle, I will use the Keystone’s cursor tool:

Next, I carefully place the four alignment circles on the corners of what I would like to be shown as a keystone free rectangle in the image.

To finish the image, I did a minor color adjustment on the blue sky with the Color editor.

Using a technical camera with lens movements

In the second example, I have been using a technical camera to create a keystone free image of a building by shifting the lens 5 mm up. I was using the Rodenstock ALPA HR Alpar 4.0 35mm lens; a lens that is supported in Capture One’s Lens Correction Tool.

Image and corresponding LCC reference image shot with a 35mm lens with 5mm shift up without any corrections

Even though the image was taken with lens movements, it is still possible to correct for light fall off, chromatic aberration and distortion, as long as Capture One Pro has the information about the lens movements and the aperture. The raw file does not contain any metadata information on the lens, the aperture or the movements of the lens, so I have to record this information, as mentioned previously.

In the lens correction tool, I do the following:

Select the lens used for the shot in the drop down menu
Enter the movements and aperture in the movements tab of the Lens Correction Tool
Apply LCC correction as explained in an earlier blogpost https://learn.captureone.com/3-easy-steps-fixing-sky-skin-tone-tool/

In this case, the movement is 5 mm up so I enter +5mm for Y shift.

Final image after LCC-, lens correction and a bot of Color Editor work

It can be a little more challenging to decide the sign for the movements when doing horizontal movements. Here, the rule is that if you stand in front of the camera, the lens movement to the left is “-“ and movement to the right is “+” – like on a classic XY coordinate system. But, if you mount the camera in portrait mode, you may lose track of the directions of the movements, as up and down shifts now should be interred as shifts in the Y direction.

A simple trick

Actually, there is a trick to determine the right sign (+ / -) when entering the movements:

Clone a variant of the LCC image and desaturate the image to get rid of any color variation
In the Lens Correction Tool, select the lens used for the image
Set the Light Fall-off compensation to 120%. The light fall-off compensation use the shift values to determine the right compensation
Use the Levels tool to increase the contrast by dragging the shadow slider. This is only to make it easier to see the effect of Light Fall-off compensation
Enter the Shift amount used for the image. If the image now appears with more even light distribution, you have entered the shift value in the right sign (+ / -)
Try the opposite just to verify that you actually did it correctly

In the above example, I am testing according to the description above, whether to use + or – in my movements. In this case, shift Y at = +8 leads to a much more even LCC file than if I entered -8, indicating that +8 is right.

Niels