Having fun with the grunge look

I was recently out shooting an event that featured an up and coming rapper by the name of Andrew “Che Blaq” Spates. He was a fun guy to photograph due to his strong presence on the camera. While I have better shots of him singing, there’s something about this shot that I kept coming back to. Perhaps it was the big cross on his chest that stood out from the rest of his black outfit, or perhaps it was the expression on his face. Whatever it was, this shot has a soul and reminded me of the heart felt music that came out of this artist.

I shot this with a Canon 5D Mark II using a Canon EF 70-200mm f/2.8L IS USM lens set at 78mm with the camera set to 1/200 sec @ f/4.0 and ISO 6400. I originally just did a quick pass with Imagenomic Noiseware Professional and a LAB Color adjustment and called it a day. After talking with Che Blaq and thinking about the shot some more I decided to play around with it to see what more I could do. I started by using Nik Software Dfine for noise reduction as it is a little less aggressive and gives me more control. I wanted to keep the detail in the hair, so I was less aggressive with noise reduction there. After that there was much work to do on the background (hover over the image above to see the first version), so I cloned out the outlet and a couple other distractions but left the rest in. I experimented with some textures from Alien Skin Software’s Eye Candy 6, but settled on a Stylize filter from Alien Skin Snap Art 2. This helped to simplify the shapes in the background, so when I applied Bokeh’s Canon 85mm f/1.2L filter I got a nice bokeh with a less busy background. I now had the background I wanted to isolate the subject. All that was left from there was using Nik Software’s Color Efex to apply the Tonal Contrast filter for a nice grungy look (by accepting the midtones default), and then some final sharpening in Sharpener Pro. The final touch was a curves adjustment to bump the brightness.

At the end of the day this was a fun shot to process and I’m very happy with the results. While I know this shot won’t appeal to some, that’s okay. I like it and so does Che Blaq so I’m happy that I spent some extra time pushing myself in a different direction.