Headshots, what's going on here?

[ysbryd]

I find these headshots quite fascinating but can't recreate that dark glassy eye and smooth liquid-like black and white. Any suggestions? Also, do you think he's using liquify in his post-processing shots to get that oddly proportioned look all of his subjects have?

http://www.10x8.com/

[Luke Kaven]

As they looked to me, most of these images could have been done with, for example, a D3x and a Softlighter. The D3x gives you very deep, clean blacks, and the end result gives a very "medium format" look. Perhaps I'm not seeing a special quality that you're trying to point out however.

[Flashtones]

Just a guess here, but I'd say the "proportions" are likely the effect of using a wider lens than is typical for portraiture. (Perhaps a 50mm on a DSLR rather than an 85 or 105).

If you want to crush your blacks like that you can use Selective Color, go to the black channel and add black to your blacks. You could also convert to CMYK and steepen the black channel in Curves. (This assumes you stay in RGB and use some form of BW or desaturation adjust layer)

[ysbryd]

Interesting points both, thanks!