How You Shot It is a series where you show us how you shot an image. Many who use our presets love to share their special processing recipes. You can join the SLR Lounge Community  group on Facebook and share your favorite images and recipes as well! Or for a chance to have your shoot featured, click here.

Today’s post is from Antti Karppinen. Antti is Digital artist, photographer, retoucher from Finland. Antti is was named Portrait photographer of Finland for 2013 and is an internationally awarded commercial photographer. He belongs to a new generation of image artisans, who believe all things are possible and creates complex visual concepts and images with unlimited imagination.

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steam3 steam4Inspiration

Steampunk is something that I’d been interested in for a long time, especially the visual aspect of it. Last year, I had a chance to take images of an amazing Welsh couple in the Maunsel House in Somerset. This Victorian mansion was the perfect setting for a Steampunk-inspired photo shoot.  The couple (Paul and Danielle) got married there a year earlier and wanted to shoot there again.

Read more about how I contacted the couple https://anttikarppinen.com/2014/10/steampunk-friends-for-life/

We took many shots that day, but I will concentrate on the first image you see above, how it was shot and retouched.

How I Shot It

The location for this image was a big room downstairs in the Mansion. There were many details, paintings, statues and furniture. Big double glass doors flooded the room with natural light. I selected a spot for my model to stand next to the window so I could get a bit of rim light from the window. I also used a 90cm Octabox as my main light. Since there was also some really nice ambient light in the room coming from lamps, etc. I decided to drag the shutter a bit so I could get capture a little mood in the photos.

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Retouching

Below are two made retouching videos from these images. In the first video, I show how I retouch the selected image. The second video is a sped up version of the retouch for those of you with shorter attention spans.

RAW File

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Steampunk Retouch – Long Version

Steampunk Retouch – Short Verison

Gear List

Conclusion

For those of you interested in doing creative shoots such as this one, I encourage you to put yourself out there. This was another case where I reached out to complete strangers to make turn my vision into reality. Weird things might happen when you step out of your comfort zone. In this case, a really cool location, meeting really cool people and producing a few really nice images. Plus, I ended up with a good story to tell.

See More From Antti

About the “How to Shoot It” Series

This educational series highlights amazing images from our writers as well as our community. The goal is to not only feature inspirational work but to provide valuable education for our photography community. If you would like to submit your work or shoot to be considered, please click here.