So, here is a little more information on my approach that I've had a few people ask me about. Please note, this is only my approach on how I view things, and I understand that people may view bmx journalism completely different. It's all our perception.

To start things off, digital photography is here to stay, until it is killed off by that new thing called video. With so many different shooters, camera companies create basic RAW files which are intended to be manipulated and processed before they are shown in a finish manner. DSLR's intentionally create bland muddy images that allow the user to make crucial decisions on contrast, color, and minor exposure details. Before, if you wanted certain details/aesthetics, you bought certain film, end of story.

Now, to my own work. I'm inspired by a lot of film shooters, so I tend to tweak my colors in ways that remind of certain films. Luckily for me I don't have to fire off 12 shots of one film just to get to a different roll because this spot isn't going to look good in velvia.

My lighting inspiration comes from a lot of people, from jeffphoto.net to patrickhoelck.com to kevinruss.com and any photographer or light source in between. Use what lighting you think works for the shot. If it's a cloudy day maybe it'll work in natty light, or maybe you could give it some edge with some wrap around rim lighting. Do what fits your vision. I like my bmx work to remind me of that day. Some days are just a chill sesh, and I want my work to reflect that.

Onward.



Today, I was shooting with my buddy Kevin Mitchell. We ended up at this spot, and he had been claiming something on that ledge for a while, so he fired out this double peg. When I started to set up, I knew I wanted something that would pop out a little bit more, so I nuked the ambient a bit to give it the dramatic sky. The 622 to the left was the main, and the 622 to the right was acting as a sort of rim light. I knew that that setup would leave some harsh dark areas on Mitch's body, so I put the 3rd flash (5000af) in the center to give it a light fill that would keep it from getting too contrasty.

I get home, plug it all into Lightroom and get to work. I never really max out the contrast, or push and pull too much on the blacks or anything because to me, in my life, I have never seen 100% black during the day with my eyes open. I like to have a little detail in my shadows, even if there isn't anything cool there.

I start off my color adjustments by neutralizing my white balance. When I'm not shooting BMX I use a white balance card, but that's just too much for you bring around pedaling when you are just going to hack the colors up later. Somehow I've noticed that giving a red tint in the shadows in lightroom makes it easier to get the tones I like in PS.

In Photoshop, for my bmx work, I basically only use the selective color adjustment mask. It does what I need it to do. I could easily do it all in curves, but it's pretty easy to overdo it when you use curves, and make some nasty mistakes by pulling at the wrong spot on the histogram, on the wrong color channel. I tend to keep my highlights a little bit warmer. It's just my preference. When you're working in the midtones/neutral area, you really have to be careful. This is where a lot of the decision making is. Do you want it to be cold? Xpro? Warm? Brisk? Natural? Those sliders all give it a different feeling to me, and I spend most of the important tweaking in that spectrum. I have a thing for cold shadows, so I usually throw more blue in there than what is necessary. My bad.

So hopefully, if you read it all, it gives a little bit of insight into how I work, and will inspire you to make more conscious decisions in your post work.

And sorry mods for posting a super long image. It's for educations sake!

I like the cool shadows and warm highlights.

Sweet guide.

A tip; learn how to use color correction with curves, it helps a lot with the look. So open curvers, and where it says RGB, choose the specific colors (red, green or blue) and adjust them (shadows and highlights). If you do a regular S curve in red and green. Then a opposite S curve in the blue channel, it will look cross processed.

Just a a tip, what the tonal curve does is in short, give the image more contrast. The less you do in PS the better but to actually go into the contrast sliders is a no-no(except for maybe a black and white image). Even if you use curves dont make the tonal curve too steep, the reason why you dont do this is because people tend to get carried away with this and loose all of the information in the blacks. What that means is when its printed, the black spot will look like a black blob placed on the paper as opposed to a proper image that has some variations between back and grey. i probably sound like a super nerd, but here is close to the limit on the curve you should have.



Ohh, and always work in adjustment layers.

and a second tip, if you want to even further correct your colors in certain situations, color correct the rbg channel, and then make a new adjustment layer for the rest, red, green and blue, apply a tonal curve to them.

John, you did nothing wrong but I'm gonna move this over to the photo discussion. I think it would fit better over there.

my curves line looks a lot more extreme then that

Yea, me too, depending on the photo. My b&w curves look like an ampersand.

thanks alot for putting this together

Just spent about 30 minutes looking through your blog, Jon. Good stuff. I saw some shots from FDR/Philly - are you from the Philly area? It'd be cool to shoot/talk shop/pick your brain some time.

How do you know what to meter the lights to?

depends on how much ambient you want in
usually it looks nice if you can stop down two stops past what ever the meter tells you the correct expsoure is without flashes

ie: meter 1/200th at 5.6, meter your flashes to 1/200th at f11

I'm still not understanding this. So if my camera is set to 1/150th iso 100 f/4. I meter my flashes to 150th iso 100 and f/6? I don't understand what to set the flashes f/stop to

first of all none of this stuff will make sence unless you have an incident light meter (not in camera)
secondly ignore the fstops on the camera, put tape over them and forget about them, those things confused the hell out of me at first, they do nothing. you adjust the power to give you the fstop reading (on your light meter) then whatever your main flash is metered to that what you want to set your camera to.

I just ordered a light meter. I'll ask you questions once it comes in. Thank you