I did this shoot when a photography student of mine Ravi sent me a text saying he was in my neighborhood looking for locations to shoot and that he had 2 models with him from Elite and if I'd like to come along. It was the first sunny day in a long time with 50 degree weather (for February in Chicago that translates into a heat wave) and the light was just perfect. I had to go. So we started walking down under the L train tracks and I looked down this alley and saw all these great old garages, and most importantly the perfect sunlight streaming through the trees and bouncing off the pavement. So we walked down, shot some pics, had a good time and I went home to process the shots.
I shoot with a 1ds mark II that has really good dynamic range and you can push the files pretty hard in photoshop if you like, and these shots are a good example of this. I started with a slightly bluer file, using a custom click white balance in Digital Photo Professional (canon's proprietary image editing software) when I was working on the Raw files and then transferred the jpgs to Photoshop CS4 where I continued to edit the final look. (I also use a 55mm F1.8 SMC takumar lens via a m42 to eos adaptor- info on this whole concept here)
I am trying out the Alienskin Exposure 2.0 software as a photoshop plugin and finding it to work out quite nicely. You open the filter, and select the film stock you want to emulate and that emulation is applied as a layer on top of your original image. I find that useful because you can apply the effect as a 100% layer or use multiple film stocks/polaroid emultions as translucent layers in photoshop to get a unique look (that's what I did). You apply the effect, go to the layers palette and proceed to adjust your layer opacity and then go on to the next step.
I hope this helps explain what I did to get the effects in these images. I've had a few questions, so I thought I'd shed some light on the subject. Stay tuned as there will be more posts like this in the near future.
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