Robert Wilson style post processing

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kendun

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Hi folks,

I have visited Edinburgh Castle over the weekend and was totally blown away by the amazing photographs of Robert Wilson.

There are some images in this link https://www.ephotozine.com/article/interview-with-photographer-robert-wilson-25911

and his website http://www.robertjwilson.com/

The photos are described as hyper-real.Robert talks about complex compositing and adding contrast layers etc. Can anyone suggest other photographers with a similar style? I am keen on looking at other work.

Any tips by TP members for achieving a similar look? I am aware that , there's no way I can achieve the same, but I am keen on learning.

Robert's gear is very impressive and expensive as well :)
 
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It looks similar to the Dragan style of processing to me

I have a few mild Dragan style presets in Lightroom, but to get the full effect you really need to brush up of your PS skills
 
Joel Grimes? Andrzej Dragan?

I'm guessing here, but if I wanted to attempt something similar to Robert Wilson's work then I'd expect to try the following. And wouldn't have much chance of getting close to the same results.
  • very careful lighting
  • micro-scale dodging and burning
  • masks and all the other compositing techniques for matching lighting, shadows, toning, focal length & so on.
  • masks to isolate areas to adjust exposure, etc. (fwiw it's harder to create accurate masks for this than it is to cut someone out completely).
  • tonal contrast adjustments, probably using luminosity masks and curves
  • possibly other local contrast adjustments, e.g. wide radius sharpening / clarity / structure etc
  • clever colour grading.
There are various 'quick' techniques on youtube which attempt to give a Dragan-like result. The few I tried weren't terribly satisfactory.
 
rpsmith79 said:
It looks similar to the Dragan style of processing to me

I have a few mild Dragan style presets in Lightroom, but to get the full effect you really need to brush up of your PS skills
Click to expand...
Thank you rpsmith, I haven't used PS for nearly 4 or 5 years now I think, I have stuck to Lightroom for everything. I will need to brush up my PS basics before I can venture further
 
juggler said:
Joel Grimes? Andrzej Dragan?

I'm guessing here, but if I wanted to attempt something similar to Robert Wilson's work then I'd expect to try the following. And wouldn't have much chance of getting close to the same results.
  • very careful lighting
  • micro-scale dodging and burning
  • masks and all the other compositing techniques for matching lighting, shadows, toning, focal length & so on.
  • masks to isolate areas to adjust exposure, etc. (fwiw it's harder to create accurate masks for this than it is to cut someone out completely).
  • tonal contrast adjustments, probably using luminosity masks and curves
  • possibly other local contrast adjustments, e.g. wide radius sharpening / clarity / structure etc
  • clever colour grading.
There are various 'quick' techniques on youtube which attempt to give a Dragan-like result. The few I tried weren't terribly satisfactory.
Click to expand...

Thank you Juggler, it sounds very very complex. An area I am keen to attempting to learn in future. Robert Wilson mentions taking about 500 or 600 images to get one shot right and sometimes gets retouching done by someone else. The phots on Dragan's website are very intense
 
The photographs in Edinburgh castle were stunning. The pictures didnt look like they were unreal or HDR etc.The colour,vividness, sharpness etc were simply stunning.I think there were some A3 prints etc and couldn't leave the room. A 4 minutes video loop of him taking shots on his hasselblad and explaining stuff was good.
 
You can get very close using LR. The primary settings are generally something like:
Highlights -100
Shadows +100
Clarity +100
Blacks -minus
Whites -plus
Vibrance -plus
Saturation -minus
Contrast -to suit
Sharpening
 
swanseamale47 said:
It does look a lot like LA sort of style. Possibly a bit of hdr first?
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sk66 said:
You can get very close using LR. The primary settings are generally something like:
Highlights -100
Shadows +100
Clarity +100
Blacks -minus
Whites -plus
Vibrance -plus
Saturation -minus
Contrast -to suit
Sharpening
Click to expand...

Thank you swanseamale47 and sk66.
 
It looks like he uses a gentle dose of Freaky Details. This layer method is simple to do directly, or with a plug in. You often see it used to extreme though.
 
ianp5a said:
It looks like he uses a gentle dose of Freaky Details. This layer method is simple to do directly, or with a plug in. You often see it used to extreme though.
Click to expand...

That was one of the few videos which came up on youtube when I was looking into the techiniques and searching for colour grading etc. Thank you.
 
Not all of the images have the same treatment tho.

Some has more dragan effect - particularly the portraits. The landscape type shots has more HDR feel to it which seems can be achieved as about adjustments to the black-shadow-white-highlight sliders and add a lot of clarity etc
 
Just to add what others may (probably) have already said. A great deal of why that guy's work looks as it does, is not processing, but lighting. You can't reply on processing alone to get your images to look like that.

However, it's just a combination of colour/black&white layer blends, contrast control and a 50% grey layer used to dodge and burn.
 
Pookeyhead said:
Just to add what others may (probably) have already said. A great deal of why that guy's work looks as it does, is not processing, but lighting. You can't reply on processing alone to get your images to look like that.

However, it's just a combination of colour/black&white layer blends, contrast control and a 50% grey layer used to dodge and burn.
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Isn't that like saying he just used photoshop?
 
juggler said:
Isn't that like saying he just used photoshop?
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Yes... although I have given some pointers to what aspects of photoshop the OP should learn and practice. I'm not sure what you expected me to do. Create a tutorial on demand? There's a ton of stuff online.. all he's essentially doing is what is also become known as the "Dragan" effect.. just Google that and take it from there.

As for compositing... again, that's all about lighting, not photoshop.


kendun said:
Robert's gear is very impressive and expensive as well :)
Click to expand...

Please do not be influenced by that. You could achieve exactly what he does with cheap gear. Good gear will not allow you to take better photographs. People take photographs, not cameras.
 
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Pookeyhead said:
Yes... although I have given some pointers to what aspects of photoshop the OP should learn and practice. I'm not sure what you expected me to do. Create a tutorial on demand? There's a ton of stuff online.. all he's essentially doing is what is also become known as the "Dragan" effect.. just Google that and take it from there.

As for compositing... again, that's all about lighting, not photoshop.




Please do not be influenced by that. You could achieve exactly what he does with cheap gear. Good gear will not allow you to take better photographs. People take photographs, not cameras.
Click to expand...

David, thank you. I am trying to concentrate on technique currently, trying my best to get it right in the camera. I do get swayed by the full frame options, but planning to stick to my crop d7000 and D70 and not upgrading unless these cameras fail :) and there's a lot I need to learn with these cameras
 
kendun said:
David, thank you. I am trying to concentrate on technique currently, trying my best to get it right in the camera. I do get swayed by the full frame options, but planning to stick to my crop d7000 and D70 and not upgrading unless these cameras fail :) and there's a lot I need to learn with these cameras
Click to expand...

Unless you print big you don't need full frame.
 
juggler said:
I was attempting - and clearly failing - to draw attention to the use of the word 'just' which suggests that achieving these results is going to be easy.
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It is fairly easy actually.
 
Am I backwards here? But in the top Dragan tutorial link in Step 4. Curves, the author writes:
4. Drag the first (lowest) control point down slightly. This will add contrast in the dark areas
5. Drag the last (highest) point up slightly. This will add contrast in the lighter areas.
But surely the contrast is higher in the mid tones with a steeper curve, and flatter in the highlight and shadow ends.
 
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sk66 said:
You can get very close using LR. The primary settings are generally something like:
Highlights -100
Shadows +100
Clarity +100
Blacks -minus
Whites -plus
Vibrance -plus
Saturation -minus
Contrast -to suit
Sharpening
Click to expand...

Thanks for that, I'll give it a go.
 
Denyerec said:
People saying they're "Adding contrast to the darker/lighter areas" when in fact they're doing the opposite to increase global contrast.
Click to expand...
Thanks. I've never heard people say that before. That's crazy talk. The sort of person who writes tutorials should know a bit more about it.
 
You can of course add contrast to the light and dark areas (A process sometimes called Tonal Contrast, or Multiband Contrast, or even Local Contrast") which is what leads sometimes to "HDR" (Also technically LDR) looking images. That's not what he's doing here, though :)
 
sk66 said:
You can get very close using LR. The primary settings are generally something like:
Highlights -100
Shadows +100
Clarity +100
Blacks -minus
Whites -plus
Vibrance -plus
Saturation -minus
Contrast -to suit
Sharpening
Click to expand...


Just tried that.....

View attachment 44012


****ing awful!! LOL

At full res the artefacts and noise of astoundingly bad too.

Why would ANYONE process like this.. I mean, those settings!!.. shadow +100? That's a ticket to Noisefest, via HDR look-a-likesville.
 
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