Dreaming of a White Christmas
This was a fashion & beauty shoot for the month of December. As a makeup artist, I created the whole look, including all of the styling and taking the actua...
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This was a fashion & beauty shoot for the month of December. As a makeup artist, I created the whole look, including all of the styling and taking the actual photograph itself.
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Mar, 2016Views
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Behind The Lens
Location
The image was taken at home. I make a "studio" out of our front room when I'm taking photographs. The furniture gets moved & the lights are put in place. This is due to change when I get my own studio in the garden later this year.Time
It was taken daytime. The windows get covered up so that I can get more atmospheric lighting without any unwanted dirty light for a studio environment shot.Lighting
I am an amateur photographer so lighting is still sometimes experimental for me. I wanted to create a dreamy feel to the picture. My model (Rachel) did her job in creating a dreamy far away look. And in doing mine, instead of two lights shining straight at the face, I had one to the side with the model's face titled up to catch the silver glitter highlights on the eyes, leaving the other side unlit for a gentle shadowy cast. I used a white bulb soft box light.Equipment
The only equipment I used in addition to the one light, was a tripod to ensure a clean steady shot, and my camera which at the time was a digital bridge camera : Samsung WB100 / 16.2m pixels with a built in optical zoom lens 22.3mm.Inspiration
As a Make Up Artist, aswell as being an enthusiastic amateur photographer, I was creating & photographing make up looks to represent each month of the year and photographing them. This one was for December. So I started with the title of Dreaming of a White Christmas, reminiscent of Bing Crosby, and created the look from there.Editing
The post processing wasn't a huge amount. Some retouching was needed on the face to clean it up by clearing blemishes & uneven skin, which I think helped with the final result, in that her skin actually looks soft & dreamy to match the look on her face which was the intention of the shot. The only other editing was colour enhancement : close lighting can sometimes overwhelm colours, so given that red was the intended feature colour for a Christmassy feel, some red colour saturation was needed to ensure it stood out on the background, lips & nails.In my camera bag
I pretty much shoot indoors, as I mainly focus on "studio" environment shots, so my main go to's are my new Sony DSC-RX10 digital bridge camera with a built in Carl Zeiss zoom lens / f2.8, my tripod, and sometimes a soft focus filter for some portraits, and of course my lights. I will also be investing in some beauty dish lighting for more detailed enhancement in my Make Up Artist creations.Feedback
This was a portrait shot, so I found getting the lighting right to create the mood & feel that you want is important. For me, keeping it simple was the key. In this instance, only one light was used for this shot : move the light around & adjust the height as needs be to highlight what is it is that you want to be picked up. If you have a particular pose in mind, get the model to take up the position, then adjust your lighting around them & take a couple of test shots to see if it's what you want. If it's not quite right, re-adjust. In this case, the sliver eye glitter was beautifully picked up & by using a white light, ensured the white jacket stayed white in a balanced contrast with the red. And by using a soft box light, the lighting wasn't to hard, creating that dreamy feel.
