the photog files: Nicole of Michenn.com

This is the second post in the Photog Files series. On this day, the second to last day for 2016 I was shooting Nicole of Michenn.com. I met Nicole through the NYC Style Collective and this is the first time I am shooting her, but hopefully not the last. We met in mid town during Nicole’s one hour lunch break—nothing like guerilla photography! Get in, shoot, get out. As you can imagine this shoot went fairy quickly as we were on such a tight schedule. Also it was quite cold and windy. In fact it was so cold my camera was responding slower then usual. But Nicole was quite the trooper posing with out her coat on!

Again I was shooting with my nifty fifty mm lens. The ISO was set to 400, the White Balance I had set to shade—though I find this makes my images more yellow then they should be. Next time I am going to try the daylight setting. I was shooting in aperture priority and had the lens at f1.6.

 With this technique on one of the adjustment layers you pull the curves tool up to brighten the overall image, and then on the second layer you pull it down a bit to add in more shadows to give the image some depth

For retouching I did a lot of color correcting to balance out the yellow. I also used the double curves adjustment layer technique. With this technique on one of the adjustment layers you pull the curves tool up to brighten the overall image, and then on the second layer you pull it down a bit to add in more shadows to give the image some depth. Such an easy way to make your photos look more polished. I also added a dark vignette to some of the photos. This helps draw attention to the subject. Here is an easy tutorial on how to create a dark vignette. There is more then one way to make a dark vignette, but this one works, and it is easy.

And for the specs on what Nicole is wearing. The top is from Genuine People, the jeans are from Front Row and her much sought after shoes are from Chanel.