PHOTOGRAPHY | RETOUCHING | EDUCATION
For this cover of Do It Yourself magazine, I needed to move the dog into the shed, including making a new shadow. Additionally, I needed to add extra image all around to fit the magazine size and design requirements. There were also several other image alteration requests as you can see.
Photoshop work by Brian C Frank. www.bfrankphoto.com
How I Work: Video 1
This is the first of several videos I am putting together, showing how I work on real-world images, to give my clients the final image they want. This first video is of a pretty simple request.
This image required to be transformed from a fall scene to summer for the client’s travel guide. This meant removing the dead branches, adding some extra greenery, and convert the fall colors to a sunny green. A little over 30 minutes of work reduced to less than two for this video. This idea for demonstration videos is not mine. Credit goes to the very talented Viktor Fejes for the idea. Enjoy!
After more than five years of photographing mixed martial arts (MMA) in Iowa, Fight Night is now available for purchase on Amazon. Forward by Magnum and National Geographic photographer David Alan Harvey. Download the attached press release for more information.
PURCHASE FIGHT NIGHT NOW ON AMAZON
Des Moines, Iowa, September 19, 2019. Iowa has a long history in the sport of wrestling. At the international level, Iowa has produced Olympic gold-medal winners. At the collegiate level, the University of Iowa and Iowa State University have won national championships. At the high school level and younger, wrestling approaches football and basketball for prestige among the athletes. Wrestling is a way of life in Iowa. It’s part of who we are.
“Frank’s work cuts to the bone. The blood, sweat, tears, and beers. Twisted odd juxtapositions that obfuscate cleverly/mysteriously just as they work to inform.”
-David Alan Harvey
Fight Night is a photography book that explores small-time MMA fighting in Iowa. Culminated over five years, this book captures some of the most intimate moments as fighters explore the highs of victory and the devastation of defeat. It also chronicles the journey leading to the ring, from training and life outside the ring to impromptu amateur fights in bars and professional fights in front of thousands of fans. The goal of the book is to envelop the audience in the same experience that fighters and millions of fans enjoy. The images give the reader the feeling that they are ringside and hearing the roars of the crowd, the cracks of the punches and kicks, and the sight of gladiators fighting to have their hand raised in victory.
Brian C. Frank was born in St. Paul, Minnesota in 1972. He didn’t begin to learn photography until he began classes at a local community college. He fell in love telling stories with his camera after following a trip to New Orleans on the first year of Hurricane Katrina. Brian currently lives in Ankeny, Iowa with the coolest family around, works full-time as a color retoucher, part-time as a freelance photojournalist and an adjunct professor.
Exhibitions:
New York
Minneapolis
Des Moines
FEATURED:
New York Times Lens Blog
Burn M
Booooooom
Joia Magazine
The Photo Brigade
David Alan Harvey was born in 1944 in San Francisco, California and was raised in Virginia. Harvey went on to shoot over forty essays for National Geographic magazine, is a member of Magnum Photos and founder of award-winning Burn Magazine. His 2012 award-winning book “Based on a True Story” published by BurnBooks broke new ground in photo book narrative form and design.
This is part of a series I will be writing about the process of making my photography book Fight Night, from stories about photographing events to the minutiae of trying to find a publisher, to the process of self-publishing. I hope you enjoy and learn a little something for your own personal projects.
I received my first copy of my Fight Night book from Blurb in the mail last week, and nearly every page had a distinctive color shift in the greyscale images. One page would be cool and blue, while the next page would have a distinctive pink cast. As excited as I was to hold a copy of my book that was ten years in the making, my heart sank at the inconsistent print quality. What follows is moderately nerdy on my part. You’ve been warned.
For those of you unfamiliar with what Blurb is, it is a platform that allows you to self-publish a book, then order as little as one copy at a time. The benefits of this are pretty obvious-no need to spend a massive amount of upfront money and fret about selling a giant inventory. Additionally, Blurb has paired with Amazon, so books can be ordered and sent to the customer automatically. It’s a pretty slick arrangement. There are some tradeoffs though. First, the per-unit cost is much higher is you are making one book at a time. Second, because Blurb is printing a wide variety of books at once, the quality of your particular book may suffer. But I had ordered books from there before and was reasonably pleased with the results.
Using just one-color black was never an option. The lack of ink density (I said I was going to get nerdy) would make the images look really weak. Because Blurb bulk prints multiple customers’ books at once, a spot channel black wasn’t an option either. So I used RGB to make sure there was sufficient ink density while keeping everything neutral. I converted the files to CMYK using the ICC profiles from the printer. When I got the proof book back, I quickly saw I was going to have to find another solution.
To make a long story short(er)I’m pretty sure I found a solution. I converted the RGB image to CMYK, and then remove the cyan, magenta and yellow from the highlight areas. Since the margin for error for a color shift is greater in the shadows, this should keep the image neutral. It also adds a bit more contrast to the images. I created an action and included it here. Enjoy.
The next step is to upload new files to the printer and wait for a new proof book. I’ll keep you updated.
