VISUAL INTEREST: STRUZAN REBALANCING FOR MIDTONE BASE

Looking deeper into Struzan’s compositions, I wanted to build off of my midtone study HERE and get deeper into just how he weaves his images together with rebalancing.

Let’s take a look at a Struzan piece:

EXAMPLE 1

Convert to black and white to get a better sense of value structure:

Now separating into our 3 value structure below. Here we can see how The main elements are mostly weaved together by midtones and darks - with only highlights popping on top of the midtones:

EXAMPLE 2

The next example also mostly sticks to the same concept. Very different composition, but the same DNA of having a woven base of midtones, blacks, and highlights on top of the midtones:

REBALANCING EXAMPLE

Finally we get to rebalancing: What to do with a raw image so it fits into the composition in the Struzan-fluid style. In the example below, I did a comparison between the raw images (roughly matched) and the final Struzan piece. I circled the main areas of change to show how Stuzan tries to limit highlights and having Dark-Over-Highlight for unwanted contrast.