Context: I was approached by a local* makeup artist Anna Maria about recreating her portfolio and this is the result of our first shoot (and the model’s first shoot). Carissa is studying theater at Purdue. *By local I mean living here, by way of Greece and London, stopping at a degree and some work in Communications :) long story. Anna Maria wants to have 4-5 different looks in her portfolio, to showcase versatility, and this was the first step: ”soft sexy” <- I wish you could hear her great accent… You’ve probably heard it before: my favorite is when ‘girl’ is “gehrll” :) Anyway, Mike was assisting and someone from Evan Todd / Aveda did hair (I really need to write down her name, sorry!).
Lighting and tech: We did the basic ‘beauty light’, one overhead and one under – but since I only have 1 main light and Mike’s was lighting the background, we just used a large reflector underneath for some bounce. (I have another AB800 on the way). I used my 70-200 IS, but noticed some vignetting in the corners on my full frame 5D. You’ll see that below. We had the AB800 that was on the background down to minimal power in order to get that light grey out of a white paper background. The AB overhead was at 1/2 power I think, in a med. softbox on boom arm. Camera was at f10 and f11, with 1/160 shutter, ISO 100. The reflector (not shown) is a large 5:1 and we used the silver/gold mix.
Here was our setup:
I still think it’s hilarious that we’re in the living/dining room where our table usually is…shooting through the doorway and into the studio space. The ‘studio’ space was just for the background and isolating that light! We had to fight the ceiling fan with the softbox where we were, but it worked out.
Tonight, Anna Maria and I met to look over the set and decide which ones to retouch. Here are my personal favs, before any retouching (just general RAW settings tweaked and some cropping):
This one I have actually done a bit of basic touchup on… bit it still looks pretty much like it did in camera. Her skin still looks like skin :)
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