I really think Bravo is missing out on something. People psyching themselves up to do something crazy, over-the-top fashion, and grown men shrieking like little girls; what is this new, as-yet-unproduced, reality TV series?  Why, the Special Olympics Minnesota Polar Plunge, of course.  There’s even a built-in path for spinoffs, a la the Housewives franchise, by focusing on specific fashion genres. For example, the series that’s limited to ’80′s outfits could be called Say Grunge To The Plunge.

Or not.  I’ve written in this space before about how much I believe in Special Olympics Minnesota, and how I’m happy to donate my time to help them publicize their events and their fundraising efforts.  So after shooting another Polar Plunge yesterday and hearing the suggestion that I should do a post on the plunges, here it is.  And if anyone from Bravo is reading, please spell my name correctly on the development fee check.

I do a lot of professional portraits for, well, professionals. Attorneys, financial advisors, authors and many others need well done photos of themselves to better market their services.  My standard rig for this kind of assignment involves a fair bit of equipment – a muslin backdrop with stands, a couple of Alien Bee monolights with stands, umbrellas, and softboxes, plus cameras, lenses, and my trusty MacBook Pro which I use so the subject can immediately proof the images as we shoot.  Sometimes I get lucky and can set up in an empty office or conference room, but more often than not, I have to squeeze into a very tight space.

Such was the case the other day when I shot portraits for a local family law attorney.  The biggest problem with tight quarters is that it changes my preferred geometry of shooting.  Whenever possible, I like to put a certain amount of distance between the subject and the backdrop.  This accomplishes a couple of things: it lets the backdrop go mostly out of focus so it is less distracting, and it also lets the backdrop go darker, which is (usually) the desired effect.  But in a tight space, the subject is only a few feet in front of the backdrop so that even at a wide aperture, the backdrop will be too much in focus.  And setting the lights to give good illumination for the subject means too much illumination for the backdrop.

So what to do?  How about increasing the distance between subject and backdrop after the fact?  It sounds too good to be true, but this is essentially what I do when I digitally post-process portraits shot in tight spaces.  The “before” and “after” attorney portraits above are a good example.  The image on the left is the original photo with no adjustments or retouching.  The image on the right is the retouched version.  How did I get from one to the other?

The key to this kind of retouching is to get a good mask/selection of the subject.  Once I have that, I can selectively darken and blur the backdrop, giving the illusion of depth.  To mask out the subject, I usually start with the Magnetic Lasso tool in Photoshop.  This can be a frustrating tool to use, especially when there is little contrast between subject and backdrop.  One trick is to temporarily ramp up the overall image contrast to absurd levels with an adjustment layer just so the Magnetic Lasso tool works better.  Once you have the selection, you can delete the adjustment layer.  Another approach is to start with a fairly gross level selection, then refine the selection using finer and finer settings for the Magnetic Lasso tool.

Once you have the selection, you need to make some adjustments to it so the blurring and darkening we’ll apply look natural.  This essentially involves expanding the selection so its boundaries are just outside the edges of the subject, then applying a large feather to the selection.  Once this is done, a Curves adjustment layer, and a quick Gaussian Blur will yield the desired results.  Often, this technique works so well that the end result looks almost three dimensional.

I shot an assignment recently at Minnesota’s 8th Wonder of the World, the Mall of America.  I was shooting for a Norwegian magazine doing a story pitching the Mall as a reasonable place for Norwegians to do their Christmas shopping.  Clearly, the exchange rate has gotten a little out of hand.  In addition to the obvious shots, like the amusement park, the aquarium, the Mall’s head of PR in a Santa hat out in front of the mall, we spent a lot of time in lingerie shops.  I got the feeling the photos I was shooting, and the story being written, were conveying a sense of “those crazy Americans, look what they’ve gone and built” while at the same reveling in and celebrating that very same over-the-top quality.  Which I guess is as a good a way as any to describe how I (and I suspect a lot of other locals) feel about the place.  When the circus plays in your backyard every day, it’s easy to become blase and jaded about it, but it’s still loads of fun.

Everyone experiences a particularly tenacious earworm from time to time, but the one that still has me in its hold has been going now for close to a month.  It’s set to the tune of Elvis’ “I Want You, I Need You, I Love You”, but is retitled, “I Reduce, I Reuse, I Recycle”, and sung by Eco Elvis, an Elvis impersonator I photographed at the First Annual Green Schools Conference.  The thing is, despite its having latched onto my cortex like a lamprey eel, I really like it, and have caught myself trying to hit those rich baritone notes in the shower.  Couple that with a recent moment in which I was “shown the true light of recycling” by my dearest, and I am now singing a greener tune.