How to achieve these pro portrait style shots?

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lexyz22

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I'm a huge fan of Bodybuilding and Photography, i saw these shots by a renowned photographer Kevin Horton, and i was wondering how do you achieve these type of shots?

Im thinking maybe a 18-70mm or something, external lighting / umbrella ?

Especially the first one, i want to know how to take shots like that.

http://sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos..._441370708782_593893782_5884926_1695567_n.jpg

http://sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos...1358661461013_1665832786_804874_5568223_n.jpg

Staff Edit: Pictures broken to links as do not belong to poster
 
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If the guy is a pro he'll probably be using some sort of 24-70 f2.8 - possibly a couple of off camera flashes either side to light the arms and legs or may be one light with a silver reflector - hard to tell and someone with a better eye than me should be able to tell.
 
EOS_JD said:
If the guy is a pro he'll probably be using some sort of 24-70 f2.8 - possibly a couple of off camera flashes either side to light the arms and legs or may be one light with a silver reflector - hard to tell and someone with a better eye than me should be able to tell.
Click to expand...

Yeah its mostly the "look" of the second photo i'm after. Obviously i dont know what PP was done on that photo, but the b&w high contrast look is great.
 
First shot looks to me like a gridded reflector or gridded beauty dish in front of the model, pointing down at quite a steep angle.

The key is the shadows. Light at tight angles rather than 45s. So try at the side lighting across, try up above shooting down.

Use controlled light as much as you can, try to avoid umbrellas as they throw light all over the place. Grid your lights if you can, hell, grid your grids if you can lol
 
Hi Lexy,

Most of the above seems pretty good advice on lighting (great photos on your stream Danny!).
With regards to the PP on images, they both look to have had the global/local contrast enhanced. They look to me like there's been some dodging and burning to bring out the definition in the muscles.

A similar effect to the second image could be created by opening your image in Lightroom or Adobe Camera Raw, then fiddling with exposure, reducing fill light, increasing black point, increasing contrast, reducing brightness slightly and bumping up the 'clarity' slider.

Run the B&W mixer and play with the levels in each colour channel, then finish off with a sharpen perhaps a a radius of 2 or more pixels.Can't guarantee results there, that's just me eyeballing it!
 
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