Crafting “One Crew”
In my last post about the “One Crew” RNLI portrait project, I talked about how I ended up shooting all of the images on the rear deck of the All Weather Lifeboat (ALB) inside the boat hall at the lifeboat station in Exmouth, Devon. In this post, I’m going to talk about how I physically crafted each image, some of the techniques I used during the shoot and during the editing phase in order to create the final images that you can see in my portfolio.
As I’ve previously discussed, I decided to create images that had a lot of shadow… dramatic lighting you might say, to highlight the face of the individual in front of the camera and throw the majority of the background into shadow. For each session, the front doors of the lifeboat hall were opened, which allowed daylight to come in through the windows of the boat behind the subject, acting as something of a natural hair light. To help the subject stand out from the background.
A snapshot from the @RNLI_One_Crew instagram story showing the lighting set-up on the ALB deck.
For these images, I shot using my Canon R5, with a 24-105mm EF lens, connected via an RF adaptor. Initially my plan was to use 2 speedlites, as a key light and a fill light. However, the limited space on the deck and the chosen location inside the doorway of the boat meant that I wasn’t able to fit in a fill light. These limitations actually forced me further into the dramatic lighting direction. I used a single Canon 580EX speedlite, inside a 90cm octobox modifier. This was off set high and right of the subject, casting a soft key light which would give strong contrast between light and shadow and add a catch light in the eyes of the subject. I balanced the flash with the natural light, generally sitting at about 1/4 power, with the camera at 1/60sec and f6.3 at 200 ISO. This gave me a depth of field that was pleasing to my eye, the background was out of focus and there was some softness to the faces. I used the great eye tracking Auto Focus setting on the R5, so I could rely on the camera to lock on to the subject’s eye each time and it always nails it.
I was then able to lock in my settings and shoot portraits without needing to make anything other than minor adjustments with the flash power, usually no more than +/- 1/3 of a stop, if there were significant changes in the natural light within the hall.
The Edit
After organising and selecting my images following a session I set about the task of editing. I use Lightroom Classic for organising the images and making basic adjustments to exposure, shadows and highlights etc to start with a base image that I was happy with. I then made all other edits in Photoshop. But my edits for this project were actually fairly minimal, the colours straight of camera were true to light, so all I intended to do throughout was dodge and burn the images to shape the highlights and shadows to (hopefully) give the image more depth and shape.
Opening the image directly from Lightroom, my first step is to create a duplicate layer from the background and using the healing tool fix any blemishes on the subject. My rule here is, if it wouldn’t be there in a week, then it goes, but all wrinkles, freckles, liverspots would stay. These portraits had to be true to life, the aim was to show the faces of the men and women who serve the RNLI.
Once blemishes were removed, I created 2 more layers. I use curves and then set one to “screen” and one to “multiply” this lightens the highlights and darkens the shadows respectively. I then invert the layers and use a paintbrush to gently brush in the highlights and shadows.
I always start with the shadows and using the paintbrush set to 80% opacity and 3% flow, I gradually brush in the shadow areas on the image. This will darken the shadows slightly giving them more depth. I then switch to the highlights layer and go over the same process, brushing in the highlight areas, anywhere the light hits I brush in. I really pay attention to the eyes, just to help them really pop out of the image.
Once I am happy, I switch the layers on and off to get an understanding of what work I’ve done and then once I’ve finalised the layers, I added the RNLI 200 logo into the bottom right hand corner. I then merged all the layers and saved the image as a TIFF back to Lightroom Classic.
As you can see from the images included in this post, the difference between the original RAW file straight out of the camera, isn’t hugely different to the edited final, the differences are subtle. But I think just help to shape the image somewhat. The key, I think, is getting the image as close to right as you can, at the shoot, so that editing is minimal. I think, especially with a portrait, that we, as photographers shouldn’t be changing our subjects too much and I am a big fan and believer in natural portrait images.
On average each image would probably take me about 15 minutes (the first session of 35 images probably took longer per image as I honed the process), but once I was in the flow of what I was doing I cut the time per image down. But if you average each image to 15 minutes, for the 108 portraits I completed for this project, that’s approximately 1620 minutes of editing. 27 hours of editing. On top of 3 sessions of 8 hours of shooting the images themselves, it’s been a time consuming process. But one that has been endlessly fulfilling.
Now that the project is complete, I am beginning to explore what is next for it, I am hoping to exhibit the images locally within my town of Exmouth so that the inhabitants of the town can see the faces of the people who serve the town and protect those of us who love to head out on the water in the beautiful town that we call home.
I’d love to hear your thoughts on these images, on my editing process either in the comments here or over on Instagram or Threads.