How is this beautiful technique created?

[blinking81]

I've found a photostream on flickr by a guy called Daniel Weisser. I love the effect that he's applied on his nature photography. The dated retro look, as if the photo has been affected by the sun over time. I have no idea how this effect is applied. I've left comments, and sent him a few messages but no reply from him - I doubt if i'll get one.

Any thoughts on what this guy might be doing?

[jiminyClickit]

blinking81,

Desaturating, then masking with a light/dark center-outward. Some lightening (not brightening). Maybe contrast tweak, subtlely done.

[wulf]

Do a search on this site for "Lomo". That's a type of cheap film camera that gives similar results (a darkened border and offbeat colours) and plenty has been written about how to post-process pictures from higher quality cameras to get this kind of quirky but attractive effect.

Wulf

[Nicole]

How to Make your Digital Photos look like Lomo Photography on the DPS Blog

[blinking81]

Yeah, I figured that it would be similar to the lomo stuff. But it is still not quite it. Lomo has the hightlights blown out so much more, and the tones are entirely different. Not the mention the contrast is completly out.

I've been experiementing in photoshop, but desaturating the images leaves the wrong tones, cross processing via curves is the closest ive got, with a vingette but I'm nowhere near the final effect that he gets.

Any other thoughts?

[jiminyClickit]

blinking81,

Care to submit an original, so we're comparing apples to apples?

[hpebley3]

I see three principle things going on:
1) Use of wide angle and getting close in and/or low angle on a subject.
2) Desaturating just the red channel.
3) Vignetting.

HTH,
Harley Pebley

[alissasanderson]

Perhaps he's using a filter on his lens? And then applying the vignette in photoshop?

[Tiberius]

Looks like the colour balance has been adjusted to the yellow side a little...

[stetson ography]

Originally Posted by hpebley3

2) Desaturating just the red channel.

As a photoshop novice, how would I go about doing this? When I select the red channel, desaturate is ghosted out of the image>adjustments menu.