We were privileged to do another project with top fashion photographer, a complete hybrid in himself: Igor Kruter. This time we collaborated with him on doing some high quality photo retouch work for Lia Elnatan Jewelry.
Before we get into details of Lia, let’s find out a little bit more about the incredibly interesting, talented and quirky Igor Kruter.
About Igor Kruter
Born in Russia, raised there and Israel, with skills that caught the attention of world renowned photographer Erwin Olaf. Kruter then became a full time assistant of Olaf in Amsterdam, where he inevitably learned Dutch the hard way, just by jumping straight in to work. If you ever come across Olaf’s work, you’ll see why he loved Igor as his apprentice and assistant. Both seem to love the painterly look of photographs, transcending from just a snapshot into a dark, surreal environment where everything looks a little off. Their work makes your head tilt, and wonder what else is really going on in there.
The magic of Kruter is that in the surreal world he uses the highest equipment possible to capture as much detail as possible. So, if you want to look in a little closer, you can. 300x closer. You will see incredible amounts of detail and effort in his work. It’s pixel perfect.
A perfectionist at heart, going by days of sleeplessness to get the job done. Igor is definitely one of our favorite photographers to work with.
Creative Partners
In Tel Aviv, Kruter and our creative director Rebecca van Ommen became studio partners. They often also complimented each other’s works with lighting, equipment, ideas and post-editing. With both being from very mixed backgrounds, their common ground was in two things: creating surreal photographs with a painterly feel, and … (you’ll never guess it) speaking in Dutch!
With their broken Hebrew and English communication, Dutch became a quick medium for their collaboration to take place.
Lia Elnatan
The edit for Lia Elnatan Jewelry is more than just an edit, it’s a true creative collaboration of similar thought processes.
Some of the key things we had to do were to create and maintain:
- Silky smooth skin, but with a touch of realism where the pores and skin definition could still be seen
- Rough hair
- Rough makeup, fully coloured but not overly precise
- Natural looking backgrounds
- 3D definition on the jewelry, especially showing the corner shine on the gold portions
- Rough metallic texture on the pieces, not overly polished
Pale, slightly colourless skin
When we were given this project, it felt as natural as a doctor handing a mother her third baby daughter. Instinctive, and received with the utmost care and love. We knew exactly how to retouch the fashion jewelry set.
We knew the style he wanted without him even saying it. This comes after years of good collaboration work together. When we have worked with photographers long enough to know their exact style, the workflow is incredibly smooth. They send us files, then we edit it to perfection.
To view more of Igor’s personal artwork, you can go here: http://www.igorkruter.nl/
Check out some of Lia Elanatan’s latest pieces here: https://www.liaelnatan.com/
