Getting the Onken look?

[residium]

Hi, I am a big fan of Nick Onken. (http://www.nickonken.com).

He has a very consistent look to all his images. They look warm and a bit vintage/retro to me. Besides his love for sun flares and beutiful models I would assume his doing some kind of tweaking in PS to achieve this look.

I have tried to replicate the look but failed. Could anyone here be so kind and give it a shot or at least give me some guessing in what he does to his images on Photoshop to get his look? (assuming he is not shooting film..)

One thing I have noticed is that the blue colors seems very desaturated but as for the rest I dont know.

Here is a link to a few of his images: Nick Onken: Chez On The North Shore

This is also good: Nick Onken: Mammoth Girls

Best, J

 

[Mindsparks]

Thoughts...

Things I'm noticing in his photography:

- A lot of his photos have high exposure for light, specifically high exposure wherever the sky and white areas are.
- The colors besides the highly exposed areas are vivid and vibrant.
- The backgrounds and surrounding imagery is frequently blurred while the people are focused very well and are highly detailed.

In order to get similar photographs you may need to photograph on a day where there is reflecting white clouds and not overcast skies. Use a low f-stop and focus on the person, not the scenery, in order to get the backgrounds out of focus. I would also try to find scenery that is vibrant, or props that are very colorful. Play around with these ideas along with things like cracking jokes and telling a story to the person you are photographing so they feel more comfortable having their picture taken.

In terms of photoshop: I would say this is mostly done without photoshop, the way he did it. But if you want to get that style just use "vivid" settings and "exposure" settings. Possibly use the blur tool.