# 3 Time Beard Champion Portraits + My First Homemade Painted Canvas Backdrop **new photos added



## DanOstergren (Oct 17, 2018)

This week I worked with the very talented hair/makeup artist Sarah and my bearded friend Madison to create some photos for an award that Sarah has been nominated for (Best Men's Hairstylist in the NW). I also got to use my new canvas backdrop for the first time, which I made myself a few weeks ago. The main focus of this shoot was hair, but I also wanted to make sure I got some good portraits of Madison as well.

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Also some BTS shots.

















 For lighting, there was a large window to camera left with open sky (non direct sunlight), and the hair/makeup artist randomly brought a constant ring light that I used with a gold diffuser to add another layer to the lighting.




My best friend works in a high end paint store and is able to give me a veeeery generous discount on supplies, so I plan on making many more backdrops like this one. It has three coats of primer, and various coats of greens and greys. It took me a a full day to make from start to finish, and I'm able to roll it up and store it in a big PVC pipe that I capped on both ends. The cost of supplies for this one was roughly $140, but there is plenty of leftover paint, primer and other materials leftover that all I would need to do is spend about $45 in order to make the next one, which will likely be about 4 feet longer on the long edge. This one is 6ft by 9ft.


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## zulu42 (Oct 17, 2018)

Very Nice! Seems like the mixed lighting brought out more nice tones in the hair and beard. I like the backdrop. Hard to tell from the photos, is it one color or is there some gradient to it? Is it a cotton canvas? Thanks


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## Derrel (Oct 17, 2018)

Good Lord... now that is one impressive beard!


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## SquarePeg (Oct 17, 2018)

Yes great light on the hair and beard - bravo!  

Love the backdrop colors.  It goes well with your usual warm skin tones.  Is that a painter's drop cloth that you used to make this?


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## DanOstergren (Oct 17, 2018)

zulu42 said:


> Very Nice! Seems like the mixed lighting brought out more nice tones in the hair and beard. I like the backdrop. Hard to tell from the photos, is it one color or is there some gradient to it? Is it a cotton canvas? Thanks


Thank you. The gradient was caused by the warm lighting from the ring light. It has a grey undercoat, and I painted green over the grey and then wiped a moist t-shirt rag over the green paint before it was completely dry in order to create texture that allowed some of the grey to show though from underneath. I used high quality cotton canvas that I purchased from an art supply store.


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## DanOstergren (Oct 17, 2018)

Derrel said:


> Good Lord... now that is one impressive beard!


I would have thought that he'd have cut if off by now, but he just keeps letting it grow!


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## DanOstergren (Oct 17, 2018)

SquarePeg said:


> Yes great light on the hair and beard - bravo!
> 
> Love the backdrop colors.  It goes well with your usual warm skin tones.  Is that a painter's drop cloth that you used to make this?


Thank you so much! 

When picking the colors for the backdrop I specifically made a point to see how each individual color looked against mine and my best friend's skin. 
For the canvas I went to an art supply store and bought some of their highest quality cotton canvas. I took every step to make sure this backdrop would be high archival quality.


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## DanOstergren (Oct 18, 2018)

Bump, added new photos (and removed the original)


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## AlanKlein (Oct 18, 2018)

Great beard, great shots.


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## jcdeboever (Oct 18, 2018)

Excellent set. His beard has grown in ft. since your last shoot. I love it that you use an older camera body and one lens. You are an impressive photog Dan.


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## SquarePeg (Oct 18, 2018)

As portriats, #1 and #8 are my favorites.  Eye contact makes them much more compelling for me.  For showcasing the beard and hair, I like #5 or #6.


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## Trever1t (Oct 18, 2018)

Great work as always and wow, a really nice job on that backdrop!


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## DanOstergren (Oct 18, 2018)

AlanKlein said:


> Great beard, great shots.


Thank you so much!


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## DanOstergren (Oct 18, 2018)

jcdeboever said:


> Excellent set. His beard has grown in ft. since your last shoot. I love it that you use an older camera body and one lens. You are an impressive photog Dan.


Thank you! 
Thank you so much!  I'll use this camera until it dies. I love my 85mm lens too, but I'll likely be picking up a 50mm or 35mm to add to my gear bag soon.


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## DanOstergren (Oct 18, 2018)

SquarePeg said:


> As portriats, #1 and #8 are my favorites.  Eye contact makes them much more compelling for me.  For showcasing the beard and hair, I like #5 or #6.


Thank you! Those are a couple of my favorite portraits as well. It was actually really difficult to choose favorites from this shoot, and there are so many more than I posted that turned out really great.


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## DanOstergren (Oct 18, 2018)

Trever1t said:


> Great work as always and wow, a really nice job on that backdrop!


Thank you so much Trever!


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## smoke665 (Oct 18, 2018)

I really like how the gold diffuser and backdrop work together in the first eight. Gives it a nice earthy tone, which I prefer to the somewhat cool sterile light of the last ones.

I tried a similar approach on backdrops using a 9x12 painters canvas drop cloth. It worked but I suspect the quality of the artists canvas you used is far superior as a base.


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## DanOstergren (Oct 18, 2018)

smoke665 said:


> I really like how the gold diffuser and backdrop work together in the first eight. Gives it a nice earthy tone, which I prefer to the somewhat cool sterile light of the last ones.
> 
> I tried a similar approach on backdrops using a 9x12 painters canvas drop cloth. It worked but I suspect the quality of the artists canvas you used is far superior as a base.


I agree, the gold light does really well with the backdrop; I was planning to use window lighting alone, but the MUA randomly brought the ring light and I'm glad I decided to use it. 

From what I've observed, painters drop cloths are a bit flimsy in comparison, so I think they're more prone to wrinkling even after painting them. Did you prime yours? I did three coats of primer, and it really helped make the canvas more sturdy.


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## smoke665 (Oct 18, 2018)

DanOstergren said:


> . Did you prime yours? I did three coats of primer, and it really helped make the canvas more sturdy.



Yes but only one coat and all the paint was stuff on hand, some which was old. I wonder how gesso would work?


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## DanOstergren (Oct 18, 2018)

smoke665 said:


> DanOstergren said:
> 
> 
> > . Did you prime yours? I did three coats of primer, and it really helped make the canvas more sturdy.
> ...


I think it's all worth experimenting with. The chances of making something unusable seems very low to me.


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## SoulfulRecover (Oct 19, 2018)

Love the earthy tones and the photos are amazing. Everyone did a very good job with this shoot.


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## DanOstergren (Oct 19, 2018)

SoulfulRecover said:


> Love the earthy tones and the photos are amazing. Everyone did a very good job with this shoot.


Thank you!


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## enezdez (Oct 20, 2018)

@DanOstergren AWESOME SET!!!!   

The only thing I can say is I wish I had a friend with a beard like that to take pictures and/or I had more hair!  lol


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## CherylL (Oct 20, 2018)

Excellent set!  Thanks for sharing the BTS shots.  Interesting that her shirt reads No Photos.


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## DanOstergren (Oct 20, 2018)

enezdez said:


> @DanOstergren AWESOME SET!!!!
> 
> The only thing I can say is I wish I had a friend with a beard like that to take pictures and/or I had more hair!  lol


Thank you so much. 
I can absolutely relate to wishing I had more hair...


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## DanOstergren (Oct 20, 2018)

CherylL said:


> Excellent set!  Thanks for sharing the BTS shots.  Interesting that her shirt reads No Photos.


Thank you. 
Yeah, I thought that was pretty funny!


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## DanOstergren (Oct 23, 2018)

All of the shots I've posted so far have only had the hair retouched, but I left the skin and clothes untouched in order to expedite photos for the client's needs. They also had a tiny amount of color toning done to them that I applied in the raw editor (ACR) as well. I'm slowly going through this set now and picking out my favorites so I can apply my full editing technique to them.
Here's the first so far:


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## DanOstergren (Oct 23, 2018)

I also wanted to show what the before and after looks like, just to illustrate how subtle changes have an effect on the photograph:


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## ceemac (Oct 23, 2018)

Those pics are absolutely stunning, the lighting, posing, everything.


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## DanOstergren (Oct 23, 2018)

ceemac said:


> Those pics are absolutely stunning, the lighting, posing, everything.


Thank you so much!


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## DanOstergren (Oct 25, 2018)

One more fully edited shot.


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## Dean_Gretsch (Oct 25, 2018)

He doesn't look old enough to have a beard that long! Did he start when he was 12?

Great editing, sir!


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## SquarePeg (Oct 25, 2018)

Would love to see your skin editing process in action.  If you ever put together a youtube video tutorial, count me in!  I've tried dodge/burn, frequency separation, selective editing... I always seem to make a decent photo worse.  Portraits are hard!


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## CherylL (Oct 25, 2018)

SquarePeg said:


> Would love to see your skin editing process in action.  If you ever put together a youtube video tutorial, count me in!  I've tried dodge/burn, frequency separation, selective editing... I always seem to make a decent photo worse.  Portraits are hard!



I would love to see your processing too.


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## paigew (Oct 25, 2018)

great portraits! and love the backdrop too!


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## DanOstergren (Oct 25, 2018)

Dean_Gretsch said:


> He doesn't look old enough to have a beard that long! Did he start when he was 12?
> 
> Great editing, sir!


I believe it's only taken him 4 years to grow it. His hair grows incredibly fast. 

Thank you.


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## DanOstergren (Oct 25, 2018)

SquarePeg said:


> Would love to see your skin editing process in action.  If you ever put together a youtube video tutorial, count me in!  I've tried dodge/burn, frequency separation, selective editing... I always seem to make a decent photo worse.  Portraits are hard!


I've been trying to motivate myself to make some videos for the last few years, and I might finally be able to make something this Winter. Do you have a graphic tablet? I wouldn't recommend dodging and burning (which is the method I use) without a graphic tablet. I paid less than $100 for my Wacom at Best Buy.


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## DanOstergren (Oct 25, 2018)

CherylL said:


> SquarePeg said:
> 
> 
> > Would love to see your skin editing process in action.  If you ever put together a youtube video tutorial, count me in!  I've tried dodge/burn, frequency separation, selective editing... I always seem to make a decent photo worse.  Portraits are hard!
> ...


I might be making a video soon but no promises.


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## DanOstergren (Oct 25, 2018)

paigew said:


> great portraits! and love the backdrop too!


Thank you so much!


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## SquarePeg (Oct 25, 2018)

DanOstergren said:


> SquarePeg said:
> 
> 
> > Would love to see your skin editing process in action.  If you ever put together a youtube video tutorial, count me in!  I've tried dodge/burn, frequency separation, selective editing... I always seem to make a decent photo worse.  Portraits are hard!
> ...



I use an iPad Pro for editing.  I have the iPad pen as well.  Not sure how that compares to a Wacom.


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## DanOstergren (Oct 26, 2018)

SquarePeg said:


> DanOstergren said:
> 
> 
> > SquarePeg said:
> ...


Honestly I wouldn't know if there are any technical differences, but my friend did convince me to try and edit using an ipad pro and an ipad pen, and in my experience it was more difficult and the edit did not come out as well.


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