how to achieve this grade

[MsT]

Hello lovely peeps,
I came across this set of photos on flickr and was taken by how "fresh" they felt ...

http://www.flickr.com/photos/sarahst...7605201160094/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/sarahst...7605201160094/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/sarahst...7605201160094/

I'm looking to emulate the skin tones and general colour grade. The cyan laden wave was a clue but the skin tones are just so nice. I am particularily taken with how it looks so high key too, I've been playing with screen blending modes and hue/sat dropping out colours and pushing the lightness on certain channels..but I'm failing. Please help :-)

I'm shooting a wedding on the beach (first beach wedding for me as a photographer I'm as excited as the bride I expect) Any help that you guys can bring either for the post or hints for shooting I would greatly appreciate it.
B
xx

[Aleksman71]

As I expected ISO is 400 and exposure 0 EV,this gives you white sky(burned out).Can you adjust Shutter Speed on your camera?Rest is PS.

See example(image is taken from Google)

[Soul_of_Kilik]

The lighting in these shots also hugely affect the soft tones of these images. Somewhat overcast natural light with a subtle fill in light - probably on camera flash set to TTL or EV -1 on the wedding and guys pics, and it seems (by looking at the eyes of the girls) that there is some reflector or scrime being used there. It comes down to soft light and filled in shadows.

[SarahJane]

Thank you for your compliment on my photos! It was a fun wedding to shoot. I can tell you exactly how these shots were achieved.

1. These were all taken at sunset so the light was superior which is how we planned it. It was very important to the bride that the photos were beautiful and natural looking and sunrise and sunset are when you will get that romantic light.

2. I used to lightroom to edit the tones in these shots. If you have lightroom you want to go to the develop tab and adjust exposure so there aren't any unwanted shadows and that also smoothes out the skin a bit. The white balance should be warm and the tint a tad on the magenta side.

3. Go all the way down to the camera calibration section and adjust the blue and red settings.

4. Export photo into ps. Duplicate the background layer and change the blending mode to overlay or soft light and lower the opacity to taste. This step is where the color pop and blow outs come from...

Thats pretty much all I did to those photos... I started out with really great photos and just pumped them up a bit. Overexposing by a stop is what I do occasionally to get the skin tone too... but if you're in direct sunlight or don't want to blowout the sky be wary of that suggestion.

Aleksman71 is right and his examples look similar to what I started with. I did not blow out the skies in camera though. In some of the photos the sky is recovered in the vignettes. Unfortunately it wouldn't have been cohesive to the set if I had the sky at the right exposure and the subjects were a little dark to me. THat's just a decision I made... it's completely subjective though.

Soul of Kilik is way off on the fill by flash or reflector. I also didn't need a scrim because the sun had already gone down enough. About 30 minutes prior the sun was on full blast as you can see in some of the ceremony pics. It was so bright there and the light was so perfect there was no need. Those are great suggestions though if you don't have the advantage of that time of day.

I do not suggest changing lenses during a shoot on the beach because sand gets EVERYWHERE in your gear! I used the same lens for the whole shoot. Good luck!

[Soul_of_Kilik]

oh well.. oops.

Nice pics though, SarahJane. It's the overlay that fooled me. You obtained a crispness and a good overall tone that i thought was maybe a fill in flash. And i made a typo... It's EV+1 (not -). IE brighter.

Where was that?

[MsT]

Thank you so much Sarah! You're a really beautiful photographer and I'm so grateful for the tips! I don't have lightroom I've been using Digital Photo Professional for my RAW conversions as nothing seemed to convert the new 5D raws when I first bought it and now I'm stuck on it and its really a bit of a clumsy program compared to capture one. Do you know if lightroom will process the 5Dmach2 files?
I shot the wedding and it was just beautiful the shots are all golden, the aussie sun is a killer even at 5:30 I was hoping for more diffused light like yours but what can you do.
Thanks so much again!
B