Review: Joel Grimes 7 part Video Tutorials "On Location Strobed Portraits"

Blade Canyon

Senior Member
I got a marketing email from MZED for this 7 part video tutorial from photographer Joel Grimes. It purports to be about how to shoot portraits with strobes on location (instead of in a studio). Here's the link:

FULL Portrait Photography on Location 7 - Video Bundle - MZed

I spent $189 to download this package which was great to watch on a long Memorial Day weekend. My photographic pursuits have been waning, and I needed something like this to pique my interests again.

First, this package was worth the money. Just the Photoshop techniques alone made it worthwhile. I will concede up front that you can probably find all of these Photoshop and shooting ideas for free online, but Grimes is an experienced and highly-paid professional, and his final images prove he can do it at the highest pro level. One of the images that was made for this series was used by Canon in an ad for their printers. I say this because I already know that some folks will quibble with his processes.

Second, the actual instruction about how to shoot on location with strobes is very minimal! The on-scene footage in each tutorial is just a musical montage. The only real instruction is Grimes sitting at a desk doing Photoshop or explaining his thought process. This tutorial is aimed at photographers who already have a high technical ability using cameras and strobes and the ability to balance strobe light with ambient light. He expects you to already know that shutter speed controls ambient light and aperture controls the brightness you get from the strobe. He does not use flash meters, but tells you to take sample shots and set your levels that way. Then he says weird things like "I don't use histograms" and "I'm colorblind" (he's serious), and "I bracket HDRs by changing ISO over three to five shots" (that one's for you, JSee!). He does not go through camera settings except to say to use your body's highest sync speed when you're trying to over power the sun.

Third, his Photoshop work seems deceptively casual, yet the final results of his work make him one of the best on-location portrait photographers in the business. The final shots in each of these tutorials is something you would love to have on your wall. His primary ideas: While in RAW you are working in 32 bit, so do everything you possibly can in RAW before moving to Photoshop. Make HDRs in Camera RAW so the final HDR is also a DNG file, allowing you to keep working in RAW. (I have updated PS and Camera RAW, yet all but once I got an error message trying to Merge to HDR in Camera RAW with large NEF files. My old PC may not have enough power to do this with RAW files.)

If you know you want black-and-white, try to make those changes while still in RAW instead of PS.

He does not use Lightroom at all. He says he is not an expert in Lightroom.

Once in Photoshop, some tools he uses repeatedly: even for color pics, open a Black-and-White adjustment layer, trim the colors to bring out skin and darken other areas, then set the blending mode for that layer to Luminosity. Copy that layer and set the blending mode to Soft Light. Adjust the Opacity settings for these layers. (This tip makes a huge difference.)

Once flattened again, copy the background layer then apply a Gaussian blur to the top layer. Set the blend mode to soft light. Adjust opacity. (Very cool idea!)

Once flattened again, create a Dodge and Burn layer. Instead of dodging and burning on the image itself, you create a new layer (not a copy layer, not a layer from background), set blending mode to soft light, and click the box for a 50% neutral color. This creates a layer that is 50% gray, with no photo details. Do your dodging and burning on that gray layer. It works!

These PS notes are repeated here more to help me remember than to explain them to you. I advise getting the series and watching Grimes do it.

Anyway, good tutorial and a high-level pro like Grimes is enjoyable to watch. Sample images from this series (these are the grittier images, but his soft female portraits are outstanding):

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This one is not from the video series, but from his website:

Volleyball HDR 1.jpg
 
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