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Shooting Beauty Series
Layered Beauty: the techniques of GW Burns
by Doc Glidewell
The photograph is now just a part of the artwork. Among the many changes digital technology has brought to glamour photography, most notable is the ability to extensively manipulate photos, to the point that the actual photo is only a part, albeit a crucial part, of the final image. Not surprisingly, many of today's best glamour shooters have backgrounds in the graphic arts.
GW Burns ( member # 18425 )
is one such artist. A former oil painter who studied graphics in college, Burns likens the ability to digitally create composite, layered images to his earlier work in oils. Just as one layers an oil painting, determining the transparency of each layer to create depth, the corresponding commands in a photo editor - layers, opacity, curves, etc -. let him "paint" his digital glamour images.
Working out of a studio in the old brewery district of downtown St. Louis, GW has created a body of work highlighted by his signature look: a beautiful girl digitally placed into an abstract, but appropriate, background. His photos automatically evoke the expression, "I wonder how he did that." In this article I will show how GW creates some of his signature looks. And I will furnish sufficient detail and all the images necessary such that one can, if desired, duplicate the work shown here.
I invited GW to Sarasota for a three-day shooting session. For locations, we used luxury homes on Siesta and Casey Keys. From the many images produced, I chose three that best illustrate these layering techniques. The instructions given assume that one is using Photoshop CS2, but earlier versions of Photoshop, or other professional photo editing programs, will have equivalent commands. For the Diffuse Glow (filter/distort/diffuse glow) filter to work as described, the background color of the photo editor must be set to white.
Burns uses Kodak’s Digital GEM Airbrush Professional Plug-In (
www.asf.com
) to digitally smooth the model’s skin. GEM Airbrush is a sophisticated filter that selectively blurs only the part of a photo it determines to be skin, leaving other details intact. It works remarkably well. But other noise-reducing software, or careful use of a Gaussian blur filter, will work also.
Each of the following three photos is a composite of a conventional glamour photograph, processed as a glamour image, with a macro photograph - an extreme close-up - of a textured surface. Burns maintains a library of hundreds of macro images that he has taken. From this library he can usually find one with a color and texture that can be successfully merged with a given glamour photo.
These images were shot handheld with a Canon EOS 20D digital SLR, using a Canon EF 17-40mm f/4L zoom lens, or a Canon 24-85 F/3.5-f/4.5 zoom lens.
Tamar (omp #173071)
, our model for the second day, was a delight. She arrived early, had a terrific outgoing attitude, and really worked at making the shoot go smoothly. And, of course, she is beautiful.
Nell Rose (omp #71748)
was our model for the third day, and we spent much of it laughing. She was great fun and the photos from the first set, with her peasant dress floating on the water, made the day. She wasn’t too sure about being nude on a tricycle but after some persuading, and more laughter, she gave in.
click to view a large image
Tamar on the Stairway.
Beautiful girl, sweeping stairway - a sure thing. These photos show the basic setup. One strobe in a 24" x 32"
Westcott
softbox was set high and slightly to the left, eight feet from the model. The exposure was 1/125, f/11, at ISO 100. The zoom lens was set at 17mm (contains full Photoshop command lines).
Editing the images: step by step.
Continue
click to view a large image
Surfacing
The sky was lightly overcast and the pool of this Siesta Key home was surrounded on three sides by the tall walls of the house. The fourth side, the “vanishing edge” of the pool, can be seen in the background of the final shot. Nell Rose is 5' 2" but I’ve always thought her best look was elegance. GW put her in a thin peasant dress and had her wade in the pool.
Editing the images: step by step.
Continue
click to view a large image
Big Chill
The theme here was tragicomic: an adult with a child’s problem - a dropped ice cream cone. Again, the lighting was a flat, lightly overcast sky and swimming pool surrounded on three sides by high walls. No artificial light was used. The exposure was 1/350, f/8 at ISO 100. The Canon EF 24-85mm zoom lens was set to 50mm.
Editing the images: step by step.
Continue
Copyright 2005, Doc Glidewell
