3 Before and After Portraits

I am primarily a people photographer. I truly believe two things – people are a funny lot and each face is beautiful in its own way.
I strive to bring both the personality and inner beauty to light.

The other night I teamed up with a MUA and a Hair Stylist for a bit of fun and a test shoot with models - Katie, Fallon Nicole and Amber Jean.

I took a ‘Before’ naked face picture of each girl as they arrived and selected one of my finished images for the ‘After’.

Amber Jean

I discussed the ‘look’ for each model with Ashley (MUA) and Sammy (Hair) as each girl arrived at the studio.

There is more to creating a memorable portrait than putting a person in the studio and snapping the image.

There are three major areas that can be controlled in a portrait session; good lighting, good make-up/hair and good post processing editing skills.

Katie

I used a 47” Octobox, creating a large light source, as the main light and a 22” Beauty Dish as the hair light for Katie.

For Amber and Fallon I used a 86” PLM, bare silver reflective for Amber and diffused for Fallon’s picture.

These lighting setups help to give lighting that will hide the most blemishes and provide a good, well lit image to work in post.

Fallon

The key to a successful model portrait session is having a make-up artist put on a good base, designed for studio lights along with the right colors to match the model’s face and outfit. A professional hair stylist is critical to these kinds of images. Then it’s image selection and into Photoshop, to remove the blemishes, smooth the skin, add a adjust color and make the image pop.

I’m interested in your comments.

Ray