Archive for the ‘Photoshoots’ Category
Beauty Photoshoot with Elisandra
Elisandra Tomacheski, from Next Models, was perfect for this last beauty shoot. When shooting clean beauty, having a model with excellent skin is essential. Slight retouching can always be done in post, but major changes to the skin leads to very artificial results.
For these first two shots, I used very soft lighting and kept the hair and makeup simple. The challenge with this type of clean beauty is getting energy from the model to match the simplicity of the concept. You don’t want too much energy, but you also don’t want her looking unengaged. I’m very pleased with how these two shots came out.
For the next shot, I wanted something much more dramatic. I brought in a fan to bring energy and movement. Adding wind is tricky because it can easily overwhelm the composition (refer to photo 3). Although photo 3 wasn’t a success, it did strike my interest when I was reviewing it moments later. I liked the direction of her hair and the angle of her face. I showed her and my team the photo, and mentioned how this was a good start. It was then a matter of working this angle again and again till everything came together. It eventually did in this fourth shot.
Album Cover Photography
George and Charles Clements are releasing a new album this December and needed photos for the front cover, inside booklet and back cover. For this shoot, I kept two primary ideas in mind.
First, the photos need to reflect their musical style. I had them send me a few of their quintessential songs and also reference photos of other musicians. Both of these steps proved helpful in understanding precisely what type of mood to convey in the photography.
Second, I had to compose the photos in a square format for the front and back cover. Even if we came away with incredible images that were of normal rectangular dimensions, these wouldn’t fulfill the purpose of the shoot. A simple remedy for this is to always shoot wide. Thanks to the 21 megapixel images, we can crop in post without losing much detail.
The shoot was a great time. As we were shooting in Prospect Park on a beautiful fall morning, I had to keep reminding myself that this was actually work. I love that feeling!
Photoshoot with Sharina
Oftentimes when doing beauty photography, I structure the photoshoot off of a basic idea or concept. Having an initial idea provides a springboard for me as well as for everyone else on my team.
For this shoot with Sharina, from Trump Model Management, I wanted to see how her long straight hair would look directly over her face. Stefano did an excellent job styling Sharina’s hair and keeping it orderly (see photo 1). Yet, I wasn’t convinced that this was the best shot we could achieve. During a brief pause in shooting, Sharina relaxed her neck, which allowed the hair to contour around her face. This was exactly the type of visual interest I was looking to achieve and asked her not to move (see photo 2).
I was pleased with the results from photo 2, but didn’t want to stop there. We continued exploring variations of this hair concept and eventually came to photo 3. As you probably notice, photo 3 lacks numerous key visual elements like form and simplicity. After seeing these flaws, I directed Sharina to elongate her back and neck. This helped improve the shape and form of the composition. I had Stefano thin out the hair so we could see more of her face. Lastly, I had her look off camera. While this last command was a rather minor adjustment, it simplified the composition tremendously (see photo 4). As a side note: Trump Model Management is still using this last image for Sharina’s cover shot. You can see this black and white beauty photo on their website.
Lip Retouch
This image wasn’t one of my favorites at first. Although the gold line was straight, my camera perspective made it look slightly crooked. I found this very visually distracting. I decided to take it into Photoshop and see what I could do. I first cleaned up the details on the skin. Second, I slightly rotated the gold line in the upper right corner. Third, I thinned out the line on the left side and did some final cleanup of small hairs around the lip. I like how the gold line provides “left to right” movement in the photo. The color scheme also works very nicely.
Water Shoot with Ania
