First proper shoot - For a Makeup Artists' website

brianward81brianward81 Registered Users Posts: 16 Big grins
edited August 21, 2009 in People
A friend of a friend has started her own business as a makeup artist. She needed some shots done for her website and since I've only just started my own business we thought we could help each others portfolio's out by doing a shoot. My main focus is going to be on babies/kids to start with so this first job made me a bit nervous but thought I'd give it a go anyway. I never thought I'd be taking glamour shots!

Equipment used;
Canon 40D
Sigma 24-70 F2.8 lens
Off camera Speedlight 430ex ii
Shoot through umbrella

I've edited 5 shots to show the client and she loved them (woohoo!). The processing involved some tips I got from a workshop which deals with a lot of glamour shots so I just applied what I learned to these. I don't have a fancy monitor so I've no idea if these will look ok to others but I'm pretty happy with the result. PLEASE give me some feedback so I can improve;

1.
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2.
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3.
3838385105_d2eb70bc49.jpg

4.
3839174932_8194b82cdd.jpg

5.
3838384805_e4dc7f197d.jpg

Thanks for looking and for any comments/advice/criticism you can give me!

Comments

  • Darren Troy CDarren Troy C Registered Users Posts: 1,927 Major grins
    edited August 20, 2009
    1 & 4 are my favorites.

    1. I would smooth the skin more, being that these are purported towards glamour shots. (wrinkles above eye and spotty skin)

    2. Compositionally (is that even a word? :D) I would have ended the frame just below her chin...in order to match the spacial distance from the top of her head to the top of the frame.
  • KinkajouKinkajou Registered Users Posts: 1,240 Major grins
    edited August 20, 2009
    Wow, what an interesting assignment!

    I like #1 and #5 best, and I agree that it would be nice in both 4 and 5 if we could see the line of the chin.

    I thought I heard somewhere that it's not good to have the subject's nose meet the line of the cheek in 3/4 portraits... I'm not sure whether that's an unwritten portrait rule we're all supposed to know, but it's something I noticed a couple of your shots.

    Also, could you lighten some of them up just a bit? Adjusting the tones in a couple shots would really make these images shine!

    Shooting models with a lot of makeup is tough work! Nice job. thumb.gif
    Webpage

    Spread the love! Go comment on something!
  • brianward81brianward81 Registered Users Posts: 16 Big grins
    edited August 20, 2009
    Thanks for the f/back Idlewild & Kinkajou!

    The chin thing is definitely something I will make sure to keep an eye on when framing my shots. Thanks for that - I really need as much advice as I can get.

    Whether or not the nose to cheek rule is standard or not for 3/4 portraits, now that you've pointed it out it is definitely jarring to me. Another thing to work on, thanks!

    Again, it's hard for me to tell if these look ok based on the crappy TN panel monitor I have at home but in regards to lightening them up, would #4 be about where they should all be in terms of their brightness?

    And you recommend I should increase the smoothing - no worries but there was one query I had about smoothing the skin and leaving the outlines of their faces sharp. I don't know if you can notice it at this resolution but if you look at the edge of the faces on #2, #3 & #5 against the black background you can see where I've tried to keep the outline of their face sharp (I had a copied layer, blurred it then erased the areas I wanted to keep sharp). But I can see where the sharpness and blur meet as a darker shade of their skin to lighter (if this is making sense) - can anyone decipher what I'm talking about and tell me how to keep the outline of their face sharp without having the transition visible?

    Thank you so much for taking the time to view these and offer your tips/tricks and advice!
  • ChatKatChatKat Registered Users Posts: 1,357 Major grins
    edited August 20, 2009
    Make up shots
    Make up shots are done really well with a macro lens.

    Some of the angles are distracting; The open lips bother me a bit and so does the false/feather eyelashes. For a makeup artist to use images in the portfolio the skin should be very smooth - without skin smoothing . That's her job! 4 and 5 the skin is hot with blown highlights. #3 her nose looks distorted from the angle and the visual/crop across the hair is distracting. Your skin in all of these should match. #1 has very low dof, so there is no detail in part of the photo on her cheek

    Hope that helps. Sorry to be harsh - but I bet you can do better.
    Kathy Rappaport
    Flash Frozen Photography, Inc.
    http://flashfrozenphotography.com
  • brianward81brianward81 Registered Users Posts: 16 Big grins
    edited August 20, 2009
    Thanks ChatKat,
    ChatKat wrote:
    The open lips bother me a bit and so does the false/feather eyelashes.
    The false/feather lashes are part of what she is trying to advertise so I tried to keep the focus on them for those shots.
    ChatKat wrote:
    For a makeup artist to use images in the portfolio the skin should be very smooth - without skin smoothing. That's her job!
    Completely agree with what you're saying here but when photographing models that are 30+ there are wrinkles and blemishes that would need foundation applied with a trowel to hide them in close-up photography. I did discuss with my wife that maybe I should not do any skin smoothing because at the end of the day wouldn't it be false advertising in a way? But after checking out a bunch of other sites for makeup artists and seeing how they've smoothed the skin in Photoshop, I decided it was best to do it.
    ChatKat wrote:
    #3 her nose looks distorted from the angle
    Hehe - this lady had quite an awkward nose which had a pretty hefty scar running down the length of it. I'll definitely have to work out some better angles for these type of shots if I'm ever going to do them again.
    ChatKat wrote:
    Hope that helps. Sorry to be harsh - but I bet you can do better.

    Please be harsh - I don't purport to be a good photographer/photoshopper (I've only had my SLR for 5 months) but I'm not going to get better unless experienced photographers can offer me some constructive criticism. The fact that nobody has said they are awful and the client is happy (although I'm not finished editing and there are 8 more for me to do) is enough for me to know that I didn't stuff up my first shoot.
  • marikrismarikris Registered Users Posts: 930 Major grins
    edited August 21, 2009
    So I actually had a long cc yesterday night, but my firefox crashed and poof it was gone lol. That really made for a huffy midnight. So I'll copy/paste from word first, this time. I'll send it to you in a sec. I hope you don't mind if I fool around a little bit with your images. It's easier to show that way.
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