Tim Duggan-Rees: Actor

Today I would like to introduce you to Tim Duggan-Rees. Tim is a young actor, who called me up to ask me to do some headshots for him. Tim is a nice friendly guy, who was quite at ease in front of the camera – almost certainly a by-product of his acting career.

Tim was also keen to try some more ‘adventurous’ shots whilst we were at it, and I promised him that I’d try to get a few shots up here on the blog to show some of the sort of things we can achieve with a little creativity on top of the standard “head shot”. Here’s a few I’ve had a little tinker with. We’ll start with a ‘standard’ image…

…and a nice black and white, quite high key, and allowing some highlights to ‘blow’ for effect. I also added a little noise to this one…

The next 3 pictures are all variations of the same image.

I always find it fascinating to see what can be done with a digital file – assuming you start with a high quality original. So here’s the original image as it came out of the camera: a nice enough shot with fairly strong lighting to give good form and shadows to Tim’s features…

…but now we have the same image again, after some judicious processing to bring out all the features hitherto ‘hidden’ inside the image file.

For this version I first adjusted both levels and curves on separate layers, then used a combination of techniques including masking exposure layers, and quite literally ‘painting with light’ to further enhance each of the shadows and highlights already featuring in the picture. Finally, a further adjustment curve layer was added to the image, vignette-masked and used to darken the outside areas of the photograph – concentrating the eye on the centre of the face and Tim’s eyes, where I want you to look.

The final image is a black and white version of the colour one above. The conversion was made giving careful consideration to the gritty, high contrast nature of the image, so as not to lose the dramatic effects of the highlights and shadows that are such an important part of an image such as this.

I hope you’ve enjoyed the images and explanations behind them – and I also hope you can see how versatile a young actor like Tim can be. Click on any of the images, to see larger screen versions.

To contact Tim, drop me a line and I’ll ensure any messages get passed along.