Shooting Beauty

Shooting beauty is all about finding the best features of your model and showing those off. Not every face looks best with any one pose or lighting.  In this set, Olivia hired me to start her modeling portfolio. We are doing two sessions, one studio and the other location. I brought in my favorite make-up artists, Tammy Taylor Cooper, who worked her magic.  Then I set this young lady on white seamless paper with just two strobes with shoot-through umbrellas.

As we worked I discovered that I really liked the way Olivia looked when she looked straight at the camera. She connected with the camera with a head on look that knocked my socks off. I flooded her face with light from both left and right to take out hard shadows and to help her skin look as smooth as possible.

Olivia did not need much coaching, she is kind of natural at posing, but we did give her some direction.  I like to see a model do something with the shapes they can make with their body, and limbs.  The above pose is simple, soft, and feminine. And there is that direct look at the camera. Wow.

This pose was Olivia's idea, I just had her switch hands so that she her arm when across the body and the fingers went up the side of her face.  Here you can see the wonderful make-up done by Tammy. I personally look for clean make-up that shows of a girls natural beauty for a new model portfolio.

This was Olivias idea. We worked if a few times to get placement right and then shot it a few times. This was my favorite of the bunch.  I like it because it shows off her slender limbs and her nack for looking gracefull.

This last shot was toward the end and I wanted to get some photos that showed different facial looks. She gave several strong looks, but this was one of my favorites.

Friday I will have a tutorial on working with swimsuit models.