HDR Portrait Photography Walkthrough

HDR Photography  •  Photography Tips  •  Portrait Photography

When photographer Kevin Bryan decided to do a photographic essay chronicling the devastation that took place when a tornado leveled much of Tuscaloosa, Alabama, he teamed up with filmmaker Xavier Burgin to document the process. The two enlisted the help of editor Douglas Dillingham and signed on a local model, Rae Marshall, to pose for the shots. Bryan, only a recent graduate from the University of Alabama, and Burgin, who is still enrolled in the university, demonstrate their interesting techniques in this behind the scenes look:

The pair used a Canon Rebel T2i for the majority of the video footage and a Canon 5D Mark II for the photography aspect of the film. A pair of  Canon 430 EX flashes were used with Westcott Apollo Softboxes as rim and side lighting during the photo shoots with Marshall. Cameras were steadied using a glide track and a Monfrotto tripod during both photographic and film sessions. Audio was captured using the combination of a boom mic and a Zoom HN4 Audio Recorder.

To get the intense HDR effects evident in the photography, shots from the destroyed house were edited in Photomatix along with Topaz Adjust and highlights were brought out using standard dodge and burn techniques in Adobe Photoshop.

HDR Portrait Photography

For photos of the model that were taken in an apartment the two converted to a studio, the team used Photoshop to produce a double RAW conversion and levels adjustments to bring out the edges of the model, and dodge and burn techniques to, once again, highlight the images.

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