- Safety Razor: Yaqi – RAG1804 Gunmetal
- Blade: Polsilver – Super Iridium
- Shaving Brush: Yaqi – Tuxedo – 24mm Bulb (Synthetic)
- Shaving Bowl: Saponificio Varesino – Faux Horn Bowl
- Shaving Soap: Tcheon Fung Sing – Vecchia Torino
- After-Shave: Tcheon Fung Sing – Vecchia Torino
SOTD – Monday 24 September 2018
- Safety Razor: Merkur – Progress (50C)
- Blade: Perma-Sharp – Super
- Shaving Brush: Saponificio Varesino – Faux Horn 2.0 – 27mm Fan (High Mountain White)
- Shaving Bowl: Saponificio Varesino – Shaving Grail Bowl
- Shaving Soap: Saponificio Varesino – Mirto di Sardegna – Beta 4.3
- After-Shave: Saponificio Varesino – Mirto di Sardegna
SOTD – Thursday 20 September 2018
- Safety Razor: Wolfman Razors – WR1 .67 OC WRH2 polished handle
- Blade: Polsilver – Super Iridium
- Shaving Brush: Declaration Grooming – Elite Black Ash Burl LE B5 – 26mm Fan (Select Badger)
- Shaving Bowl: Saponificio Varesino – Shaving Grail Bowl
- Shaving Soap: Declaration Grooming – Pure Lavender
- After-Shave: Barrister & Mann – Reserve Lavender
SOTD – Sunday 16 September 2018
- Safety Razor: Timeless Razor – Closed Comb – 0.68mm – 100mm Barber Pole
- Blade: Polsilver – Super Iridium
- Shaving Brush: RazoRock – 400 – Aluminium – 24mm Bulb (Synthetic)
- Shaving Bowl: Saponificio Varesino – Shaving Grail Bowl
- Shaving Soap: Stirling Soap – Barbershop
- After-Shave: Stirling Soap – Barbershop
- Fragrance: Rebul – Dark Spice
SOTD in the making
Some of you guys wanted to see how I create my SOTD pictures. In general, I take two different styles of shots, one involves using a LED cube for high key shots and the other involves taking a series of shots in the dark with a method called light painting and later merging those shots into one.
After merging I use software to enhance the picture to make it shine and pop.
Below I have tried to put together a 10-step walkthrough to let you in on my secrets.
- Used equipment
- Choosing the shaving gear
- Stage the scene
- Setup the camera, focus on the objects one by one, go to manual focus and go into dark mode (i.e. in this shot I first did step 4 and 5 for the splash, then 4 and 5 for the brush, etc., etc.)
- Use the iPhone as a light source to paint in the light with the “Light Paint” app, using the full white screen on highest brightness setting, whilst the camera is in Bulb mode, which I trigger with the remote trigger.
- Repeat step 4 and 5 until you have enough good lighted pictures of all the objects
- Clean up the table. (yup…OCD)
- Post processing
- Lightroom CC
- Photoshop CC
- Select all layers and auto-align them
- Sort the layers and color label them to remind myself which layers are focussing on what objects. The colors are randomly chosen.
- With layer masks, paint in the portions you want from all layers
- Make sure you go through every layer mask and make sure there is no light spill
- Flatten the image
- Crop the image so there is no more transparent space visible again
- Use the healing brush in different ways to correct blemishes/dust/particles/flaws
- Save and quit to LR, remove all other images and use the merged image in next steps
- Select all layers and auto-align them
- Nik Collection
- Lightroom CC
- Before
- After
- Post to social media
- Done