Soft Touch
Tuesday December 20, 2005 by Yervant
Hello from Melbourne Australia where we are enjoying a sunny and hot Christmas and New Year season. Here is an article written by Peter Eastway of Better Photography Australia which I thought was a great capture of what I do and how I do it all in a nutshell.
-Yervant
Wedding Masters
Soft Touch
Photographer: Yervant Zanazanian M.Photog.
Australian wedding photographer Yervant Zanazanian has made a name for himself around the world. Not only does he photograph high-end weddings at home and overseas, he is greatly in demand as a speaker on wedding photography, Photoshop and wedding album design. His Page Gallery system allows has been purchased by hundreds of wedding studios to help them quickly and expertly design albums for their clients using a simple template system.
This year (2005), Yervant won first, second and third place in the Wedding and Portrait Photographers International (WPPI) Wedding Album competition over in Las Vegas. He also won the AIPP’s inaugural Wedding Album competition back at home in Australia. However, within the AIPP where Yervant is a Master of Photography many times over, he is known best for his exemplary wedding photographs and the glamour he produces for his brides.
Apparatus
Yervant uses a Canon 1Ds Mark II set to medium quality JPEG and when he says he shoots around 2000 exposures per wedding, you understand why he shies away from the RAW workflow.
“I know it can be dangerous to shoot JPEGs, but if your exposure is correct, it’s perfectly safe. I check out the histograms as I go and I’m also shooting manually. I don’t use program mode or aperture-priority.”
Manual exposure fits the way Yervant shoots, setting up a location and directing his subjects within it. It also has its advantages because within Yervant’s wedding albums, he uses sequences of images – say of a bride dancing or a series of facial expressions. If the camera were set to program mode, each exposure would be slightly different, making it difficult and time consuming to match the exposures in the prints for the album. By shooting manually, every exposure is exactly the same, providing a uniform series of professional exposures.
Yervant has a wide selection of lenses and while the 24-70mm f2.8 is probably pressed into service the most, he also shoots with a 16-35mm f2.8, a 70-200mm f2.8 IS, an 85mm f1.2 and a 24mm f1.4. He takes as many 1 gig and 2 gig cards as required and doesn’t download his images until the end of the day.
Creating The Moment
Although good equipment and technique are essential for wedding photography, Yervant explains that the most important aspect is the ability to direct your subjects and get them to act and appear natural in the photographs.
“There isn’t a lot of time to spend at a wedding, so I can’t afford to sit back and wait for something to happen. I have to create the moment, so rather than waiting for a breath of wind to carry the veil into the air, I’ll have it thrown into the air. If a special moment happens, I’ll be there to photograph it, but if it doesn’t I’m not going to go home without any pictures.
“So, I take the bridal party into a bar and give them a few drinks. Then, when they’re having fun, I’ll pull out my camera. By this time, all the expressions are completely natural, but I’ve created the moment.
“The trick to great portraits is to get the bride and groom to relax and enjoy the photography. I’ve been accused of overtaking a wedding, but I think I’m misunderstood. Certainly I’m directing the wedding, but they want to be directed. That’s why they selected me to be their photographer. If they want a purely photojournalistic approach, we’ll send them to another photographer who shoots that style. We direct our clients, tell them what to do, where to go and how to look. That’s our market.”
When speaking to the bride and groom, Yervant is sure to give them plenty of compliments and he shows them the photos on the camera’s LCD screen as he goes. “None of these people are professional models, so it helps for them to see what I’m achieving and give them the confidence to keep going.
“My work attracts the girls who want to look glamorous in their wedding album. They want to be seen wearing an expensive dress and beautiful shoes, so on the day I am capturing everything in exactly the way they want to be seen.
“Creating romance in a photo is also all about directing the couple. While the photos are semi-posed, it’s what happens while they’re in that pose that creates the naturalness and the romance. I talk to them, give them ideas and they respond. It’s not like traditional wedding photography where the hand must be positioned a certain way and the toes pointing another. That’s not how I pose people.
“I watched a photographer working the other day and noticed that his bridal party seemed bored. He was spending too much time setting things up and not enough shooting. I’m very conscious of never keeping my bridal parties waiting. We are always on the move, changing locations and moods.”
Album Design
“Everything at a wedding is carefully planned, from the dress and the shoes to the car and the church flowers. As a photographer, it’s my job to capture all those details, so before the wedding I’ll talk to the bride and groom to find out what’s important to them – places, things and people. I need to know what they’ve got planned so I can be prepared. I’m not looking for individual hero photos – although one or two are needed for the album cover and back page – but for a group of photographs that will work together as a series.
“When a bride and groom look at the photos, the first ones to be eliminated are the detail shots. It’s hard for them to previsualise why the detail shots are so important in an album, so that’s why I’m in charge of the album’s design. I’ll let them select their favourite photos to ensure they’re included, but then it’s up to me to tell the story of their day. ”
Yervant likes to use sequences of images within the album He might devote an entire page to a dozen photos of the bride with various poses and facial expressions, or a series of six images of her feet as she dances.
“I design the album in my head on the day. Every album is different and I’m like a journalist writing a story, but with pictures. Not every bride and groom want to do the same things, so it’s a matter of finding suitable locations and activities.”
Page Gallery is a computer program created by Yervant to streamline the layout and design of wedding albums. “In the early days, I was making very busy album designs, but these days my Page Gallery templates are much simpler. In many ways they’re like a traditional album, but without mattes. There are around 4000 different templates and it takes no longer than three minutes to create a double page. The file is kept in separate layers so it can be adjusted or personalised in Photoshop later on.”
To create an album page, images are simply dropped onto a template and the process is automated within Photoshop. Page Gallery then generates a high resolution Photoshop or JPEG file which can be sent to a lab or an inkjet printer. You can create any size album you want to and after it is finished, you can also re-size it at the click of a button.
Soft Focus In Photoshop
“The type of client I attract like glamour. That’s my style of photography – fashion and glamour. It’s not photojournalistic or traditional, my clients want to look their very best and that requires some retouching in Photoshop.”
Yervant stresses that every image requires a slightly different treatment, but explains that there are some basic steps he applies to the majority of his wedding images. Using the photo of Becky as an example, he described how he approaches a typical portrait of the bride.
“This image was photographed at the bride’s home in her mother’s bedroom. She’s lying on the bed and her mother has covered her shoulders with a shawl. I’m using available light from the window – I hardly ever use flash – and then it’s just a matter of getting Becky to feel relaxed and natural.”
In Photoshop, Yervant creates a black and white image by converting the file to LAB mode (Image > Mode > Lab Color), opening the channels palette and deleting the ‘a’ and ‘b’ channels. What’s left is the luminosity channel which can then be converted back into RGB mode for further editing. This technique gives a lighter monochrome rendition which works particularly well with portraiture.
Whether the image has been converted to monochrome or remains in colour, his next step is usually to soften the face. This is something that is done visually and to taste, so it’s not a formula where one setting fits all portraits. Rather its a process of selecting separate areas of the face and blurring them appropriately.
Importantly, each face is blurred section by section. For instance, the forehead, each cheek, the nose and the chin are given different amounts of Gaussian blur.
To blur a section, Yervant uses the Lasso tool to make a selection around the area he wishes to work on. The selection is then feathered by around 10 pixels – not a lot. By pressing Control + J (Command + J on the Mac), this selection is copied and pasted onto a new layer. Working on the new layer, a Gaussian Blur filter is applied. More blur might be applied to the nose than to the forehead, depending on what looks good, and in addition to blurring each section differently, each layer can have its opacity reduced to further control the effect.
After several sections are blurred, their respective layers are merged, but the background layer is left in tact. Yervant then carefully erases the blurred layers away from the eyes or lips so that they are left relatively untouched. At this stage, the image can be completely flattened.
“Different people need different amounts of retouching”, explained Yervant. “A bride with a lot of pimples on her face would require more Gaussian Blur than someone with very good skin. Nor do I want to completely blur the face and give it an airbrushed feeling – I think you need to retain a feeling for the skin underneath.
“Retouching a bride’s face this way is a favourite with my clients, even if they are already very pretty. Let’s face it, the bride has a make-up artist to ensure she looks beautiful for the day, so if I can take the effect a little bit further, she’ll be happier still.
“I also reduce shoulders. Many brides wear sleeveless dresses, so if they are at all overweight it can affect the photograph. I don’t ask them if I should do this – you can’t ask that question. You just do it and they love you for it.”
To reduce the shoulder, Yervant makes a selection around the outside edge of the shoulder, including some background. The selection is feathered and a new layer created with the selection (Ctrl/Cmd + J). Then, using the Move Tool, the selection is nudged inwards and possibly rotated.
“It’s a very simple technique and you don’t want to over do it. You’re not after a Size 8 which might be unbelievable.”
When the retouching is finished, Yervant darkens and softens the edge of the image. Using the Rectangular Marquee Tool, a selection is made around the edges of the frame, inverted and then feathered to 250 pixels. Again, Yervant presses Ctrl/Cmd +J to create a copy of this selection and paste it onto a new layer. He opens the Levels dialog and darkens the edges, then uses the Gaussian Blur filter to blur the edges as well. The result is a subtle darkening and blurring around the edges, focusing the viewer’s attention on the subject of the photo. When finished, the image is flattened.
“I use this technique on a lot of images, especially close up portraits. I have a number of actions programmed into Photoshop with ‘pauses’ that allow me to adjust the Levels or set the radius for Gaussian Blur. Each image only takes a few seconds to refine, but the extra effort is worth it. Our brides need to appear glamorous in every picture.”
