Jeffrey Engel wrote:
I like what you do but I like the original better! The original looks like film.

Well this isn't about whether people like the original better or not, it's to explain how to get MY finished product.

Emily Fine Again wrote:
You rock at making images pop.

Thank ya babe!

C R Photography wrote:
Thanks man.

Your lighting angle is what awed me.

Great ingenuity and use of a fucked up boat (I assume it's fucked up if it's in the middle of the desert)

it's not fucked up. it's waiting...for a flood.

damon wrote:
All I need is 1 Victoria and I'm set. 

She's one of a kind.

Good luck with that lol.

Laurence Moan wrote:
I have a feeling we will be seeing A LOT of squeeze cheese on MM soon.

Maybe.  But i'm the original Brie.

abSolute KeLviN  wrote:
Holy Crap, Batman! WL 10000's?   LOL. No f'in way...  I was sure you we're gonna say some mega-32million-watt Elinchromes or something.

You Rock, dude!

Nope, nothing fancy.

Three coffee cans



And one super cam:



produce most of my images.

Bob Randall Photography wrote:
Bare bulb to me means no reflector, no nothing, yet your images have a light intensity and spread that indicates a reflector. Does bare to you mean a reflector with nothing diffuse over the front?

i believe the old wl units had built-in reflectors that could not be removed, so this would have to be the case.

Bob Randall Photography wrote:
Bare bulb to me means no reflector, no nothing, yet your images have a light intensity and spread that indicates a reflector. Does bare to you mean a reflector with nothing diffuse over the front?

Yeah.  I say bare bulb with THOSE lights because you can't remove the reflector if you wanted to.  It's as bare as the coffee cans can get.

Christopher Bush wrote:

i believe the old wl units had built-in reflectors that could not be removed, so this would have to be the case.

But i'll be damned if they aren't the most kick ass lights.

Ransom-The Cheese-J wrote:

But i'll be damned if they aren't the most kick ass lights.

definitely the coolest looking.  very retro and kitschy.

Christopher Bush wrote:

definitely the coolest looking.  very retro and kitschy.

Yeah i hear you're into retro and kitschy.


You'd shoot with coffee cans with some miracle synced holga while wearing beat up chuck taylors and an apple cap if you could

Ransom-The Cheese-J wrote:
Ok so in regards to my "The "How Do You Do It?" guys... thread, i was given the idea to make this thread.  I'm going to go through my typical process for getting the look that i have on my pics.  I figure that when people hit me up to ask, I can just refer them to this thread, plus if anybody else has a picture or look that they consistently get questions about, they can also post a short tutorial in here to show how they did it.

First off, i like bright saturated colors and high contrasts in my pictures. (obviously).  Spectral highlights and hard shadows are also something that i like the look of.  So my style is tailored to that.  For my outdoor pictures (which is what i will be explaining in this thread) i tend to shoot bare bulb strobe with no modifiers, due to the fact that it will give me the harsh shadows, kick up spectral highlights and give me the high contrasts that i like. 


As far as equipment goes, I shoot with two or three white lightning WL-10000's because i like the durability, the color temp and the simplicity of them.  Most shots in my port were shot with the Sony DSC-R1 digital camera, so that let's you know what camera I use. 

The type of pictures that i take are only going to be as good as the model, the MUA, and the backdrop that you choose.  For this one I choose my favorite model, Victoria #133499, one of the MUA's that i use from time to time that i have such a lovely relationship with, and picked a location in the mountains on the way to Lake Mead here in Vegas.  It's a great little desert mountain location where some environmentally conscious people did me the favor of dumping all kinds of great shit to use as background fodder.

let's take the out of camera RAW image:



This was taken as f/11, 1/200, at a focal length of 14mm  with the contrast set at +1 and the color setting on Vivid.

The first bare bulb WL-5000 was about 10 feet to the  to the models left at about her 2 o'clock position.  the sun was my fill to the models right at the  her 10 o'clock and a had another bare bulb WL-10000  about 10 feet behind the model and boat as a rim light.  Both strobes were set to 2/3 power and are rated at 250 watts.


The first thing I do is open the file in PS CS3 and do any skin corrections (evening, smoothing out, dodging and burning)

then i duplicate the layer and go to Image>Adjustments>Selective Color



I normally will bump the blues in the sky to whatever look I want (I like a rich blue or purple sky myself) by adjusting the sliders in the Selective Color tool.

Then I create a layer mask and hide all so i can paint in my sky and bump up the reds in the boat without effecting the rest of the picture (which is where i want it to be)



After painting in the sky and boat, I'm pretty much done so i save the PSD file and then save a jpeg



here's the side by side.




Alright.  That's how i do it.  It's the best i can do as far as explaining it without actually having you there to watch me work.

hopefully this helps some people, and other photographers add in some tips and tricks of their own.

Dude, you must be mistaken. That can't be how you do it 'cause all the experts here on MM say that White Lightnings and Alien Bees suck!

Ransom-The Cheese-J wrote:

Yeah i hear you're into retro and kitschy.


You'd shoot with coffee cans with some miracle synced holga while wearing beat up chuck taylors and an apple cap if you could

hmmm....how do you know all this? 

what's an apple cap?

Ransom-The Cheese-J wrote:

Yeah i hear you're into retro and kitschy.


You'd shoot with coffee cans with some miracle synced holga while wearing beat up chuck taylors and an apple cap if you could

Not shitty enough, nor with good enough glass.

Ransom-The Cheese-J wrote:

Yeah.  I say bare bulb with THOSE lights because you can't remove the reflector if you wanted to.  It's as bare as the coffee cans can get.

Cool, thanks.

One other thing. This picture..


You say you don't do much in post but this one has some stuff going on that seems to defy that statement. It appears the sun is creating the light on his right side (viewers left) and your strobes are doing the front work. The background is suppressed very well but the sun highlights are scorching. Whats up with that. Do I have the lights mixed up?

Christopher Bush wrote:

hmmm....how do you know all this? 

what's an apple cap?

A Scilian birdy told me.



And an apple cap:

Marko Cecic-Karuzic wrote:

Not shitty enough, nor with good enough glass.

are you saying i'm apparently-paradoxical-but-not-really?

Bob Randall Photography wrote:

Cool, thanks.

One other thing. This picture..


You say you don't do much in post but this one has some stuff going on that seems to defy that statement. It appears the sun is creating the light on his right side (viewers left) and your strobes are doing the front work. The background is suppressed very well but the sun highlights are scorching. Whats up with that. Do I have the lights mixed up?

shot at 11 in the morning.  Sun was HIGH.  Cam on a timer, on camera flash.  That's it for lighting.

Did some dodging and burning and then added a high pass filter.  Save as jpeg, upload.

Ransom-The Cheese-J wrote:

A Scilian birdy told me.



And an apple cap:

don't have one of those! 

gots to know who this birdy is....

Marko Cecic-Karuzic wrote:
BTW, kudos Ransom. You need say nothing further when people ask, if you ask me.

Thank ya sir!

Ransom-The Cheese-J wrote:

shot at 11 in the morning.  Sun was HIGH.  Cam on a timer, on camera flash.  That's it for lighting.

Did some dodging and burning and then added a high pass filter.  Save as jpeg, upload.

Cam on a timer? That bad ass dude is you? I thought you were white.