http://www.davehillphoto.com/

How does he do it?

photo illustration me thinks....combines some photos with some illustrations....add some hdr technique and should be about it.

a couple of techniques... first starts with lighting... you can check out his website and see the lighting setup he uses... jill greenberg uses a similar setup... two strong lights on each side, blowing out the highlights, and usually 2-3 different keylights (jill uses 2 Briese umbrellas and a ringlight)...

after that you create an HDR image using 3 different exposures drawn from the RAW file and run it through a program like Photomatix Pro (hdrsoftware.com) and tone map it...

from there you can begin the retouching, though mostly it will be shadow/highlight work, cuz it'll be mostly done...

trust me, if you're gonna try and do this stuff in daylight, you're gonna need a lot of bloody light to compete with the sun... the inexpensive way to do it is to shoot a "background plate" of the exterior, shoot the actors or models in a studio mimicking the exterior light, then compositing the 2 together...

check out this guy's work (shindov.com), he did his night photo series the "inexpensive" way as i described... there's a rangefinder magazine article on it...

hope this helps,
d

mr hill is one of the photographers/retouchers we have discussed many times here...

One effect plugin that can emulate the effect is Lucis Arts and that givessome effect to the whole picture...

Gerry

I have to agree with dromatador and superkoax.

You have;

- Lighting (lots and expensive)
- HDR, or at least tone mapping (I use Photomatix)
- Lucis Arts plugin (or my version in the link below)
- Highlight/shadow retouching (again as below)

It's not impossible and I've had some successes at emulating his style as well as Jill Greenberg (<- read Amy Dresser). I've got a couple of tutorials in my signature that may help you a little.

Some examples attached although not exactly the same will give you an idea of how diverse these few methods are;



Dave Hill style - First is purely Shadow/highlight* treatment with Lucis Arts*
Jill Greenberg style - Second is tone-mapping, shadow/highlight* then small amount of Lucis Arts*
My own style - Third is false background, tone-mapping, Lucis arts*, shadow/highlight*
My own style - Fourth is full HDR+tone-mapping, shadow/highlight* then Lucis arts* (yep... real background)

* These are the tutorials linked below

I know they aren't exactly the same but I've not done many of these types of shoots as I've just started getting to grips with it myself.

This should get you on the way. All you have to do now is get some very expensive outdoor lighting and you're off. :D

Edit: Oh! dromatador has a good point at the end too. Also check out Florian Schneider for some insipration on compositing in new backgrounds.

So many people are asking how to get these "grungy" effects...

So much of it is controlled at the photo shoot. Look at the setup Hill has. You've got to control the lighting at the start to get a decent result.

can someone explain to me what tone-mapping is?

thanks

looks to me like shadow/highlight manip of the RGB, as well as layers of High Pass (at high radius on Soft Light perhaps)or Custom Kernel Filter...

can someone explain to me what tone-mapping is?

thanks

This link (http://www.hdrsoft.com/resources/dri.html#tone_mapping) should help you.

It's basically a way of making a HDR (high dynamic range) image viewable on a LDR (low dynamic range) media like a print or the monitor.

It also has a side effect if you tone map an LDR image to make it look like a HDR (i.e. mimicking HDR a little).

thank you enig.

In canada there's also a photographer who kind of uses the same techniques on some photos. Or is it different techniques?

www.dmitrimarkine.com

There have been a number of comments in the thead above with regards to lights. To get this effect what kind of lighting set-up is required? Type of lights..number? Just curious for someone who may know. Brand? How much would one need to invest?