Getting different color/depth in portrait

[Maurice]

Hi there,

I'm wondering how I can achieve this colouring:


As an example, I got this from Google:



Perhaps a noob question, but do you really need a great camera to get depth like this?

 

[Bonedog]

not so much a better camera but better lighting, then its basic editing techniques thrown over the top, levels, brightness and contrast, saturation, it also looks like it has a purple and orange gradient map, also maby the hdr function found in photoshop cs5 or higher