Contest Entry: Sean Armenta Deconstructs A Beauty Shot

We knew there were going to be a lot of last minute contest videos submitted but never would we have thought this many of you would have waited until the last minute. I want to thank everyone for participating but I’ll give no sympathy to those who lost lots of sleep this weekend trying to meet deadlines since you had 90 days to do this! Sean Armenta‘s BTS video is the latest of the last minute entries, and in it he shows how you can create clean and professional beauty shots just like you seen the pages of women’s magazines such as Elle, Vogue, and Glamour. All of this was also done with just one light which should help those of you on a budget. Check out Sean’s website as well since he has some amazing photos in his portfolio!

Sean Armenta | One Light Beauty Setup from Sean Armenta on Vimeo.

August 1, 2010
  • http://www.levymoroshan.com Levy Moroshan

    Very cool. Love the fact that Sean strives to get the image as close to perfect in camera. I agree with that. I hear photographers way to often say “I’ll take care of it in post”. :)

  • Simon

    Would love to see some Photoshop advanced techniques from this guy. Seems to be pretty good !

  • Preston

    Best vid!

  • Richard

    Yeah, that was just top notch material right there. Fantastic job Sean.

  • http://twitter.com/digideth B. Moore

    That was Awesome!

    I thought the Golden Rule of Photography was:
    “… perfect in camera …”

    I agree with Simon, would love to see a BTS just on the Photoshop work he did.

  • Simon

    This was really informative Patrick… Thank you so much!!

  • http://realizeculture.com andy hatch

    most helpful yet. love the simplicity of the shoot and the detailed set up help

  • Sean Armenta

    thanks guys –

    yes i am very nitpicky about image quality in the capture stage – anyone who has been on set with me especially makeup and hair people can attest to that. in reality though, it’s really just taking a few extra steps and a little bit of time when you are doing your test shots that make a world of difference. if the hairstylist can take 2 seconds to spray some strays down, that saves me time in post from having to fix that. same with makeup – it takes a makeup artist 5 seconds to fix a lip line. again, time saved in post.

    i will definitely be doing a basic post production workflow video – will probably break it up into steps and have some for a specific purpose, such as beauty retouching. it’s just that for this contest entry i didn’t want you guys to sit through more than 10 mins of me droning on and on.

  • http://www.simonecphotography.com Simone Carter

    Brilliant entry – really love how each step was explained in detail and also how the setup wasn’t overly expensive with a fantastic outcome – awesome!

  • http://www.pslimages.co.uk peter

    Clear, Informative, Excellent Result! – but please slow down on the Photoshop stuff!!!
    Peter

  • Stu

    Lovely video, and well presented thanks for sharing. I’m couldn’t tell from the video, but it looked like you were either using a third party PS plugin, or even another program for retouching, please could you tell us more?

  • http://seanarmenta.com Sean Armenta

    thanks stu – yes i do use imagenomic’s portraiture and noiseware plugins as an integral part of my post production workflow. a more in-depth retouching video is in the works which will outline this in a step by step manner.

  • http://www.bastianhansenphotography.com Bastian Hansen

    Awesome video, straight to the point, very informative.
    Outstanding job, mr. Armenta.

  • foo

    I enjoyed this one a lot. Curious about one thing though, why did you shoot at f/16 when you metered at f/16.7 ?

  • http://seanarmenta.com Sean Armenta

    foo – any meter reading you take will be for a middle gray, whether you use your in-camera meter or a handheld incident meter. you have to take into account what value you are exposing for, in this case, i was exposing for fair skin, which of course, is a lighter value than a middle gray. therefore, you have to deviate from the reading the meter gives you in order to arrive at the “correct” exposure.

  • http://HeySean Kris Cain

    First off… thanks for the inspiration, and the great video. I do a lot of beauty photography, and fashion work. I’m trying to get my skills up to where yours are!

    My question for you is this… When doing skin smoothing… Do you worry about the loss in detail in the client/model’s skin when or if the picture is enlarged for print? You see, I used to smooth skin on clients as well, BUT… the more I researched the methods of the top retouchers in industry, the more I see them using dodge and burn techniques to create flawless skin as opposed to the healing brush, and patch tool, and clone stamp. I was wondering what your thoughts were on this, and if you’ve ran into any issues using the third party plugins like Portraiture 2 and such.

    Thanks for the inspiration!

  • http://seanarmenta.com Sean Armenta

    hi Kris,

    no not at all. portraiture 2 when used properly, will yield the same results if not better at a fraction of the time it would take you to do it “manually” using in-program photoshop techniques. the image must be properly “prepped” using simple tools such as the clone stamp and healing brush before running the plugin. i have no loss of skin texture, in fact all the natural skin texture is retained and can even be enhanced. i shoot a lot of beauty so obviously retaining skin texture is of the utmost importance to me. i will try to upload a full res version so you can see the amount of skin texture present in the final retouched image.

  • Jig paca

    love ur vid brotha, it’s one of the best ive seen prolly the best every helpful. Yoh the man sean.

    Btw, It’s Jig fellow PINOYGRAPHER!!!

  • sully

    great video – more more !!! Would like to see what you did in pshop – amazin work

  • http://www.ipbrian.com IPBrian

    This was fantastic! Looking forward to the post production tuts Sean!

  • Ronald Manrique

    Wow! you have always been an inspiration to me and just simply amazing..proud of you Sean!

  • http://www.solsticeretouch.com Solstice Retouch

    Sean, that was really enjoyable to watch as well as very informative. Great video.

  • http://www.aspen-photography.co.uk Turner

    LOVE this BTS video. His lighting is so clean and beautiful. Hope it wins. Totally loving my beauty dish at the moment, now to make a reflector.

  • Jeremy

    I agree, I am very interested in seeing a BTS of your post work!

  • Aron F

    This is the best tutorial video i have ever seen. 5 of 5.

  • Connor

    Best video i’ve seen so far. Vary helpful and informative!

  • Gordito73

    Sean, thumbs up for this awesome video. Very informative and to the point. As said above, would be VERY inspiring and beneficial to have a step by step of how you post processed the RAW file in PS. Great entry. Thank you so much!

  • http://www.samashby.co.uk Sam Ashby

    Wow, I’m blown away. Clear, informative and professional. Definitely one of my favourite bts video so far.

  • Mihazero

    Sean, most amazing video. I`m amateur photographer and was always wondering about how you get some things done, and you answered about 95% of those with your video. BTW what is that song you used as background? I have been humming it for past half an hour non stop.

  • Harry Pehkonen

    Awesome BTS and tutorial! I think my favorite so far. I’m really impressed by what you can do with one light. Thanks very much for sharing. :D

  • jorge

    these is a great video, for shooting beauty shoots on a budget, i will try these metod soon

  • Lorna Hattler

    Beautiful girls. Love the makeup!

  • http://www.csproductions.info Carl Stewart

    While there’s no question that Sean is a talented and very knowledgeable photographer, and I appreciate the content of this video, the audio quality leaves much to be desired. It’s easily improved by using an external lapel microphone connected directly to the camera. Everything else about this video is very well done, in my opinion. It was very well conceptualized, shot, and edited.

  • http://www.facebook.com/paulferradas Paul Ferradas

    Anyone know the type of art paper he is using by name at the art store. I went looking for some of this stuff but I’m not sure i got the right one.

  • http://www.stevehale.net/ Steve Hale

    Only just come across this, very cool and has already been said beautiful model !

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