I was wondering what exactly you did to get there.
When it comes to most of these shots to make them look more... "painterly?" It was actually quite simple. You may have been able to do them without dual ISO but, have that extra dynamic range made it easier and higher quality. I simply lifted the shadows very high and brought the highlights down significantly and applied a lot of contrast and clarity in Lightroom. Often, multiple lays of clarity with the brush tool painted over the whole image. Or course, being selective in some areas where it seemed it fit.
The staged one with the soldiers and the humvee was a bit technical. I wanted there to be motion blur of one soldier in the background so I wanted a longer shutter to do so. I also used an ND filter maxed out as much as possible without the x-factor. I shot it on an image stabilized lens, handheld at 1/12, ISO 100 AND f/22 in daylight. I used a flash on the soldier in the foreground on rear curtain sync to stop any motion and to help create that interesting lighting. I them brought it into Photoshop, ACR filter for adjustments, including clarity, and them made masks to changed levels, curves, hue selectively where I liked it and dodged and burned where I thought it looked good. I then finished it with a mask of lens blur to simulate lens blur even though I shot it at f/22.
Thank you for your service.
Thank you!
