fundoshi fabric photos and more

Sunday, May 24, 2015

Fundoshi Rehash 6 - White Lawn With a Black Dot

I continue with the surplus of photos from Fundoshi as Prop and Fundoshi as Prop....Part Two . For today's post production, I am pushing the ideas I had in the original shoot a bit further. I wanted a flat feel to the photos, and with my increased knowledge over the past couple of years on using Aperture, I think these are more of what I originally wanted.

original

rehash

I may have gone a bit too far, but I actually like the looks of these.

As you can tell, I desaturated the color quite a bit. I also increased the black point a bit. I did this because when I desaturated and flattened out the vibrancy, I was loosing detail on my body hair.

Increasing the black point helped retain the detail in the hair.

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Fundoshi Rehash 5 - White Lawn With a Black Dot

For today's rehash, I have a lovely white lawn fundoshi with a black dot. These photos are the surplus from Fundoshi as Prop and Fundoshi as Prop....Part Two. I think I'll stop calling them 'rejects' as they didn't appear in the original blog due to me limiting the number of photos each blog contains. In reality, since I shoot these myself, one shoot might be 150 to 200 photos, of which I choose about 15-20 for the blog. By just doing some simple math, you can see how I have a surplus of photos to choose from for this 'post-production' project I am on.

original

rehash

As you can see, the original was quite flat in its tone. I decided to pump that up a bit by starting with the 'toy camera' filter Aperture has. I used this in a lavender rehash, and liked the results.

I then increased the vibrancy a little as well as the blacks.

For the few that I was originally trying to achieve a soft focus on my body and a sharp one on the fundoshi, I manually manipulated the areas a bit with skin smoothing and blur options.

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Fundoshi Rehash 4 - Lavender Gauze Again....

Once again, the lavender fundoshi originally seen here, here and here.

For this take, I had a bit more of a 'what would happen if' type of approach.

rehash

original

So here is a breakdown.....

Extra exposure (I know, they seem dark for that), increase black point (oh, now I get it) and a slight decrease in brightness.

I played with the Curves settings until I got the effect I wanted and added the vignette we spoke about in another blog.

Just as you suspected, I increase the intensity of the contrast.

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Fundoshi Rehash 3 - Lime Green Gauze

One of my favorite fundoshi colors - lime green. Because of this, today's rehash puts the green front and center.

The original shoot these photos are from can be found here, here and here.

original

rehash

As you can see, I played a bit.

I did some simple tweaks to the exposure, making sure I retained the detail.

Then I significantly increased the black point, making them a lot moodier than the originals.

Once that was done, I changed them to a highly contrasted black and white. It was then a matter of removing the black and white filter where I wanted the green to show.

I will admit, these took a while to get right, but I like the outcome.

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Fundoshi Rehash 2 - Lavender Gauze

For today's rehash, I took a very simple approach. I applied a 'toy camera' effect. Here is the before and after:

When I did the original shoot these are from, I was trying to make the photos look as close to reality as possible. You can find the originally posted photos here, here and here.

This simple click of a button to apply this effect did some odd things. It increased the definition and saturation.

It also pumped up the vibrancy and increased the details a little in the shadows.

It then changed the 'vignette', which a quick google search tells me it is the darkening of the image corners in comparison to the center.

I just think they look cool, all colorful and everything.....

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Fundoshi Photography Rehash 1

I'm back, but not in the way you may think.

I still haven't done a new fundoshi shoot as I am still riddled with bald spots on my torso where medical technicians shaved me. You would think they would at least even everything out, but no....

While on my hiatus, Ryan over at Fundoshi For All ! suggested I go through my old photos and see if a second look would make any difference. A re-crop or two, some post production stuff.

So tonight, I started to go through my 'rejects' from a shoot done in 2013 have this for your appraisal:

Hunter Green Cheesecloth - originally seen here. I would like to say there was a reason for starting here, but it was the first folder I came across in my archive. I think it was also quite a favorite - probably due to the title having the phrase 'see-through'. I think you will notice how much less shy I am about the see-through aspect!

Now I'm going to talk a bit about post-production. I'm hoping this suggestion from Ryan will help me to understand some of the tools I use. For this, all work was done in Aperture except for the watermark. First, I pumped up the Exposure to blow out the highlights.

I also increased the master Contrast and pumped up both the Black Point and Brightness. This gave me the play of light and dark I wanted.

I played with the Curves filter a bit until the photos were almost unrecognizable, then backed it off about 50%. The last thing I did was to add a 'Color Monochrome' filter that is the same color as the actual fundoshi. Instead of making it a 100% monochrome photo, I backed off this filter a bit so some of the original color is used. I like how this approach adds a bit more dimension than just going 100% monochrome.