BurgaFlippinMan said:
Ok, sorry for my hopeless description.
What I meant was something like this...you know..a more filmy look...less digital/slide-ish...
http://www.pbase.com/luminous
No problem bro... I think I get "roughly" what you mean. I went to this site to take alook at what, maybe, you were trying to produce in your own photography. Pictures produced in that particular site uses digital cameras to shoot. From a D70 to a P&S. So what gives you the "feel" or "look" that prompted you to sense it to look like negative film if I may add?
The photographer is pretty good with the Photoshop or some digital graphic manipulation as seen in almost all his shots. Which mean he has spend a long time if not years doing this as a hobby or as a professional. I can't really see what "negative" effect that would be unless you are talking about film grain.
In fact alot of the stuff that photographer did in his shots, he used some Photoshop's plug-in effect(s) to finalise the look. Most of the black & white stuff he did was done using effect plug-in similar to "high pass" adjustment. Other effects he could be using in the other pictures are like colourising and texture filters...etc Some of these effect plug-in comes with Photoshop but alot of the better or specialised ones, you have to buy. Some of those effects can not be teached as they are done using more then just one or more special filters or digital painting. This photographer has been experimenting quite a bit and has come up with a way of going about it in a style he loves. ( this guy is a great admirer of Henri Cartier-Bresson for goodness sake! heheh) And it's also about having a good idea on creative, photography composition, play of colours and a great passion for it. I am impressed with the way the photographer does his creation. And of course it helps to have interesting models to shoot and familair with. You have to also know that mostly likely he has taken tons of picture to harvest this "winner" shots.
I also don't see any grain or anything close to the "negative' type film shot here that you mentioned or hopping you could archieve yourself....all I see are well composed shots, very engaging use of lens/angle, way the photos were shot to create certain effects and yes of course photoshop was definitely used to great effect to produce the end results.
If you really want to learn how the photopher uses photoshop, that would be hard for anyone here to explain it to you every effect used and how it was used and most importantly ...what it was used to deliver the "story" in the shot. To get to the heart of using Photoshop (or the fine art of photography) you need to do what most of us do. In my case it is part of my work thus I have to spend years doing( and still do as more options come with each new upgrade of technology and s/ws), spent alot of money buying books for reference on photography, art direction, digital art how to books...etc, might even have to attend classes, view more work and then try to imitate the effect yourself and of course .....practice and practice..etc. And after some time you start to come up with your own special effects for your own pictures to call your own.
For me..grain or no grain is no big deal to me. If I shot it on digital why try to fake it to look like I use a SLR...if so I should not have sold my film based camera equipment at all heh. In the end, at elast for me it is the creative. The camera or film is just a tool...to me anyway. A tool I use in combination with other creative tools to create an end result.