Hello All,


I've been trying for nearly a year to get my images gain a look like photo a illustration. Recently, a colleague directed me to look at the sites of the following photographers Jim Fiscus, Sacha Waldman and Gary Land. Not knowing these photographers (as I'm UK based) they all have the final look I want for my portfolio. I have Lucis art but am not very happy with it's quality so far. Where can I work towards creating a similar look?

http://www.garylandphotography.com/
http://www.sachawaldman.com/portfolio.html
http://www.fiscusphoto.com/

These are some of the best post-production based photographers around. 50/50 photography, retouching. There's no one-click, or plug that will give you any of that. And then its just using your visual imagination, and be prepared for labor intensive work. Each one of those images probably represents at least 25 hours + work.

As a retoucher you are only as good as your source material. Never waste time working on a poor starting point. You find that at soon as you have great source material, your work leaps into a different category pretty quickly. What mainly separates good from bad in retouching is good, bad source material. Its a privilege to have a great starting point, people when they have been doing it a few years forget that.

when i think of illustration, i think of this look:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/personalspaceinvaders/1690423160/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/mando_gal/1685710920/

http://www.melissaclifton.com/tutorial-popart.html

Hi Markzebra,

Thanks for the quick reply. I am fully aware of the labour (we spell labor with a U in the United Kingdom-strange, I know) intensive hours required to create each image and that each image requires high quality source material to get started. What I'm looking for is advice for a foundation point of which I can get stared with my final post production. I'm being taught how to shoot a good plate and how to composite but I looking to research how to create start creating the illustrative look to my own taste. Have you tried it? and if so what results did you get?

Please excuse my terminology I suppose I should use photo realism.