Got a problem?  I am an excellent listener.  Attentive and patient.  Please, go right ahead.  I’m all ears.

Got instructions?  Wait, now, what was that?  Didn’t quite…must’ve not been… Come again?

I suffer from a common disorder known in some circles as “topic-specific attention deficit disorder” or “TSADD.”  (OK, so I’m the only person who calls it that. Don’t sweat the details. You’re not really listening anyway, are you?)  As a result, if you purport to tell me what to do, I’m probably not gonna pay a whole hell of a lot of attention to you.  Sorry, that’s just the way it is.  Some things will never change.  It’s not really arrogance that makes me this way.  It’s more like a little kid trying to prove I-can-do-it-myself-so-get-your-hands-away-from-my-shoelaces.

I love cookbooks, but recipes are a challenge for me.  I treat them like glorified grocery lists — I’ll get my hands on most of the suggested materials, but when it comes time for the mixing and sauteing, somehow the book just closes itself.  I have a similar fair-weather friendship with most processing tutorials.  I’ll read through them once, absorb the salient points, note the critical steps — and then launch Lightroom alone.   The results — they’re mixed.  Sometimes, I find myself digging through the history log in Firefox, begrudgingly retracing my steps back to the lesson so that I can determine where it all fell apart.  Other times, I put my own imprint on the process and am delighted when my image doesn’t look like all the others uploaded that week by the faithful blog-reading flickrati.

The vast & wild interweb is full of tips and tricks on how to process, manipulate, fix, enhance (and not obliterate) the pixels produced by your camera.  Poke around for a bit and you’ll start getting all kinds of ideas.  But, be careful.  If you unthinkingly put your photos through all the very same adjustments as the legions of hobbyists seeking to educate themselves on the web, your photos will end up looking like everyone else’s.  No bueno.

Recently, everyone (and all their Facebook friends) has decided it would be super-cool to emulate the Dave Hill look.  Step-by-step “instructions” to copycat Mr. Hill can be found everywhere you look.  However, most will agree that to really achieve an effect that has that Dave Hill magic, you’ve got to specifically light the photo with a deliberate eye toward the final result.  In other words, its not just a matter of formulaic processing.  To do it justice, you need intent and follow-through.

Nevertheless, while fully uninspired last night and feeling way too lazy to do much of anything original, I decided to see what all the fuss was about.  After staring at this article for about 10 seconds (which suggests an easy way to mimic Hill in LR), I applied the advised settings to one of my photos.  It was alright.  It looked different for me, but not particularly unique or compelling.  So I went into recipe-mode. (There is no cure for TSADD, which can be both a blessing and curse.)  I found a few funny-face photos in my archive that were properly exposed but otherwise problematic for one reason or another.  I started by making the key adjustments to each photo:

- Recovery up around 100
– Fill light up around 100
– Blacks between 25 & 40
– Contrast up around 100
– Vibrance up around 100
– Saturation down to -80

And then I took matters into my own hands.  I started by readjusting the values I’d just established until the ratios and proportions were right for this image.

- The colors looked too tortured, so I dropped the saturation complete, down to zero.
– Next, I added a bit of brightness to make it all pop even without color.
– Then I selected a strong contrast curve and made very minor adjustments to the shadows and highlights.
– Using a heavy clarity boosting adjustment brush, I painted over the eye area.

But it needed more.
Command+E & take trip to CS3.

- In PhotoShop, I duplicated the background layer, changed the blending mode to “Soft Light” and dropped the opacity WAY down (23% or so).

I cropped the portraits real close and added a thick border to add to the stylized presentation.  By this point, I knew I’d want to tell you all about this little experiment of mine.  So even though I’ve grown to dislike framing (an add-on I was quite fond of when I started processing), I figured it might to help make three unrelated portraits fit together better.

Not done quiet yet….. Back to Lightroom, one mo’ time:

- Noise Reduction (Color & Luminance) all the way
– More painting with clarity boost and drain brushes where needed.
– A little more contrast/brightness adjusting… and Bob’s Your Uncle.

I happen to think my way is fun for funny faces of all ages.
Will I be doing this too all of my photos?  Certainly not.  Am I glad I tried?  Why not.

So don’t get too hung up on getting it right, doing it like the pros, or making your photo look “just so.”  Soak it all up, little sponges.  Read to your heart’s content.  But remember – this is not Catholic school & there’s no stern, ruler-wielding nun in the front of the room waiting to show the class that you didn’t follow directions.  It’s your photo and your process.