Actors Styled Portfolio Session & Photoshop
When it comes to performing artists and actors it’s not just about the performers headshots. There are also portfolio sessions too. Here are a few examples from an Actors Styled portfolio session in my studio. A combination of character-styled photography showing the creative side of the talent.
A great addition alongside your headshots and portfolio across websites, agency websites, social media and showreels.
Interactive 360 Actors Styled Portfolio
Getting Creative
Along with his regular headshots, Chris wanted this dark moody British Gangster vibe for his Actors styled portfolio and wanted to include images of him with props. Including smoking a cigar, a cigarette and a bottle of Jack Daniels!
I couldn’t exactly have him smoking for real in my studio though!
We did discuss doing the smoking shots outside, but then we would have lost the ambience that we were aiming for. So with that in mind, we decided to fake it!
Photoshop Smoke!
The smoke isn’t real!
The following images are to illustrate the process I took from the studio shoot through to the final images the client received for his portfolio.
After setting up the studio backdrop and lighting how we wanted it I had Chris work through several poses for the session.
This is one of the original images taken in the studio.
Make a note of the Cigar – It’s unlit and not been used.
In the second phase I’ve made a few quick adjustments in Adobe Lightroom to mute some of the colour vibrancy and saturation to give the photograph a dark washed out style.
I’ve then brought it into photoshop to create more shadow and reduce the brightness of the foreground hand making it less distracting away from the face.
Now the fun part! The cigar now appears to be lit. Including the burnt end and ask well as the burning ash at the tip. None of this is real! This is an artificially created composite to make it look real!
In reality the cigar remains unused.
The final part of the post processing was to further darken parts of the image (using curve layers) and then adding the smoke.
We could have used lit incense sticks in the studio, however chose instead to create all of it within photoshop.
Using a variety of photoshop brushes on different layers. Then adjusting the opacity of each layer I was able to create the fake smoke and the final images was complete and ready for the client!
The process was applied to the rest of the photographs, including creating the lit cigarette too. I was asked if I’d applied a “filter” in the sense what most people would do with their phone images. However you would never be able to create the level of detail or have the control needed.
The beauty of using a combination of Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop is that none of the adjustments are ‘baked’ into the image. The original remains untouched and I can go back and change any aspect of the photograph I need.
Want more or less smoke? Need it lighter or darker? – No Problem.
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