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Beach Beauty: The Images of Andy McFarland
Andy McFarland (OMP Member #1582) is a specialist.
Andy photographs girls, beautiful girls, under natural light.
He doesn't shoot in a studio, doesn't use lights, or fill flash, or reflectors. He describes his work as a camera, a lens, sunlight, location,
and a model. To that I'll add: a time - Andy shoots the vast majority of his work during the three hours before sunset.
Andy's business, AMaginations Photography, is located near Daytona Beach, Florida, and most of those beautiful girls are photographed on the beach.
His images are characterized by the beauty of the girls, the crisp resolution, and the saturated colors.
Several photographers have asked me how Andy achieves this look. This article will surprise them. There are many idiosyncracies in Andy's workflow,
but it's the image that counts. And a steady stream of models fly into Daytona to get those McFarland images.
Andy began shooting sports - mainly tennis - seven years ago, and was captivated by the power of telephoto lenses.
When he decided to shoot photos of his truck, along with a model in a bikini, Andy found himself with far more photos of the girl than the truck.
She liked the photos, and word of mouth brought him more local girls to shoot. Andy taught himself Photoshop and the use of a film scanner,
but the long delay between taking the shot and seeing the final image frustrated him.
When digital hit and Andy bought a Canon D30 digital SLR camera, everything changed. Instead of the long learning cycle using film
- take photo, process film, scan film, find mistakes, retake photo, digital gives immediate feedback, and Andy credits that
with getting him excited about photography again. Six months after he began using the D30, he bought the lens that remains
his favorite to this day, Canon's EF 70-200mm f/2.8L USM zoom. One year later, Andy moved up to a Canon D60 and when its shutter failed,
he upgraded to a Canon 10D camera, which, despite owning a newer 20D, he still prefers.
In addition to the 70-200, Andy's lens arsenal consists of the Canon EF 50mm f/1.4 USM, and the Canon EF 24-70 f/2.8L USM zoom. Indoors,
the 50mm, set at f/1.4 to bring in as much available light as possible, is his standard lens. But for shooting on the beach, the 70-200
zoom never leaves the camera. Changing lenses on a beach could contaminate the camera and, regardless, the 70-200 is the ideal lens for Andy's style.
Andy shoots with the lens wide open, the f/2.8 aperture throwing the background out of focus, and he shoots fast, developing a rhythm between
himself and the model. The intense light of the direct sun allows him to use high shutter speeds - typically 1/1000 to 1/4000
- so he can hand hold the camera, move around freely, and still get sharp images.
One of the challenges of Andy's "large aperture" style of photography is the crucial importance of precise focusing. With purposefully little depth-of-field, there is no margin for imprecise focus. A photo is ruined if the model's ear is in focus but her eyes are not. Because his model is moving from pose to pose, Andy finds the larger autofocus points of the 10D give him more margin for error, and fewer out-of-focus pictures, than his newer Canon 20D.
For this article, we took the stunning Ashley Gellar (OMP #223054 ) to a rocky beach inlet near Daytona Beach. The conditions were not ideal; 55 degrees with a steady 20 mph wind, but everyone toughed it out - especially Ashley wearing nothing but micro bikinis - and, after a three hour session, we walked away with a camera-full of classic McFarland images.
Creating McFarland-style images: the batch process
One idiosyncracy of Andy's image handling is that he normally edits low-res images.
Unless he is producing a print or a poster, all of his photos are destined for the Web,
and he reduces them to web-size right out of the camera. And all photos receive a 3-pixel
border and aggressive sharpening. Since it is the same with every image, the process can be automated.
From the camera, the original images - shot as large, normal format jpegs - are dumped to a folder and,
employing the batch command in Photoshop 7, they are processed and working copies stored in a second folder.
The steps to include in the batch command are:
Rotating the image. Image/Rotate Canvas/90
Reducing size. Image/Image Size/ and set document size to 6" x 9" at 72 ppi. This yields a 432 x 648 pixels image.
Add a border. Select/Modify/Border/ and set to 3 pixel width. Edit/Fill/background color at 100% (which is normally black).
Select/Deselect.
Sharpen the image. Filter/Sharpen/Unsharp Mask set to 80%, radius of 3.0 pixels and a threshold of 7 levels.
Save image to working folder.
Then you can apply specific edits to each 432 x 648 image. If you choose to edit the images at this size, as Andy does, you might prefer to enlarge the image on your display. All the numbers given in these instructions assume you are editing these small jpeg images.
Editing each image
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Ashley and the Dirty Bird
Here are the original and the batch-processed versions of our first photo. Ashley is wearing a very cool rainbow mesh bikini from Dirty Bird Bikinis
www.dirtybirdbikinis.com. The border and the increased image sharpness are obvious.
This is a typical McFarland pose: hands in the hair, kneeling, facing the setting sun. Raising the arms lifts the breasts and shows off the model's
abs. And it is easier for a model to pose in a kneeling position. Issues of leg and foot placement are removed and the model is free to concentrate on expressions.
Editing the images: step by step.
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Ashley on the rocks
Another shot of Ashley, this time in a Fiu Fiu www.fiufiu.com
Nua Vstring Brazilian bikini, laying on a boulder and facing the late afternoon sun.
The line from the model to the photographer is roughly 20 degrees off a straight-on view of the sun; nonetheless,
Ashley was keeping her eyes closed until just before each photo was taken.
Editing the images: step by step.
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click to view a large image
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The Butt Shot
Another standard McFarland pose. Andy purposefully keeps his poses simple, especially for beginning models.
The model has few options here and can concentrate on her expression.
Andy's shooting regimen is a product of the digital revolution in photography.
The harsh highlights on Ashley's face and the hard, high shadows behind her are near universal to direct sunlight shots.
Without Photoshop, Andy would need a crew and giant scrims to diffuse the light.
Instead, Andy and the model typically work alone on the beach during the last few hours before sunset.
This photo, after going through the batch process, has especially hard shadows and Andy will make no effort to soften them.
Editing the images: step by step.
Continue
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Copyright 2007, Doc Glidewell
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