I came across Dave Hill’s site a few months ago and was pretty impressed with his photography. The combination of composition, lighting and post-processing creates an effect I haven’t seen anywhere else. This week’s photo is a quick around-the-house shoot I did of a person giving the blue-steel look from the movie Zoolander. I used a technique posted on a Flickr discussion board, found here, that tries to replicate the Dave Hill look (it makes it a little more gritty and exentuates wrap-around lighting, highlights, etc. It comes close in some ways (it achieves the gritty look), but still falls short in others (it isn’t quite as ‘painted’ as I’d like).

I still like this effect, though, and it works well with several types of photos. You can click here for a before/after of the photo.

Click photo for a larger version.

Dave Hill-like Effect

Canon 40D, 2.8 24-70L lens at 50mm, f8, 1/250 sec, 400 watt-second studio flash to right and reflector to the left to fill. Some small adjustments made in Lightroom and the effect mentioned above applied in Photoshop CS3.