Beauty can be a lot of fun to shoot and it’s fun to find different ways to light a face in a flattering way. We might not be perfect in real life, but on camera? On camera we can be as perfect as the lighting setup and editing allows us to be! Magic? No. We still need gorgeous models but a great setup certainly helps.
For this shoot the setup was done using the exact same equipment as one of my previous beauty articles. Big soft light is always flattering so it's an easy go-to choice for beauty. Only models with near perfect skin would I attempt to shoot beauty with hard light! The octa also provides beautiful circular catch lights. I placed a reflector on her side to lighten the shadows a little but I made sure it wasn't too close cuh that it flattens out the lighting. The makeup artist was also told to give a slightly more dewy makeup so the highlights on her skin popped more.
Equipment List
- Canon 5D Mark II
- Canon 85mm f/1.8
- Profoto 5-foot Octa Softbox
- Profoto 8A and Pro Heads
- Silver Reflector
Lighting Setup
This lighting setup is fairly similar to the clam shell lighting I showed in my previous article where the model is between two light sources. One of them is an octa and the other is a reflector. Do note that for this image, I did not use the external diffuser and only used the internal diffuser as the image was a little too soft for me.
Lighting setup done with set.a.light 3D software. It's useful to test out lighting before the shoot too.
Post-Processing
Generally when it comes to beauty retouching, it can be quite intensive as people are not perfect, especially at 200 percent. This time around I got a professional retoucher Mariia Konovalova to help out with the editing.
Closing
Let me know what you think and if you have any questions!
Beautiful final photos but I'd like to see the "before retouching" shots to have a better idea how much was due to your lighting setup and how much, the retouching.
Great point!
Helpful! Thank you so much!
But you are only shooting with a 5D Mark II. That can't have enough resolution for you to be considered professional! JK. Good walk through. Thanks for posting.
Are you actually serious?
No, not at all :P
These "how I shot" series of articles you're doing are properly freaking awesome and useful. Really appreciate you putting this info up Shavonne.
Very nice although I'm not really a fan of this orange peel style of retouching. Personally i think you could bring it back a little.
Caption: 'Natural Beauty Shoot' --> how i did make-up, lighting and heavy post-processing.
Nice Work Shavonne!!!
The article will be perfect with the raw files :-)
hey shavonne. Great pics...again lol (youre uber talented). I have a question on auto focus on the mark iii with the 85mm. Did you use manual or autofocus? And if you used auto focus, what type of autofocus did you use? Im assumming you use one-spot AF and focus on the eyes. Its hard for me to focus using autofocus that close up.