Fashion

The majority of photographers I know have a love/hate relationship with post production and retouching. In fact, for most of them, it's more of the latter. As a fashion photographer/retoucher myself I find I'm often in the minority as I personally enjoy both. Quite often I enjoy retouching more than shooting even. There are of course people out there who solely retouch and don't shoot at all.

Photographer Steven Baillie is well known for his work with GQ and Playboy. Another interesting part about Steven is his ability and willingness to travel all around the world just to find new faces. Here's a behind the scenes look at some of his amazing adventures along with some of the new faces he finds and how he finds them.

Here's a behind the scenes video featuring editorial and advertising photographer Stefan Ruiz. He traveled to Monterrey, Mexico to document the "Cholombiano" youth street culture. Skip to about the ten minute mark to see the set up and capture. He shoots exclusively on 4x5 film, and is highly influenced by renaissance paintings.

It's easy to think that models are perfect in every way because when we see images of them they have had hours of hair and makeup, they are lit by some of the most talented photographers on the planet, and then they are retouched by the most meticulous Photoshop artists around. In this post we get to see side by side comparison shots between each model without makeup and then after the full production. Each of these models looks pretty normal except for the last one that looked incredible even without makeup.

Photographer, Michael J Moore was granted access to a creepy and abandoned state mental hospital for this fashion shoot. He used a combination of lighting setups but mainly, the Phase One 645DF camera with a Profoto 8A 2400W and various Profoto strobes. With all three different lighting set ups, Michael did a great job at capturing that Vanity Fair-esque look that we all know so well.

As photographers, we are always in search of that new unique lighting modifier to add to our bag of tricks. I recently saw this video on Strobist where Amber Gray claims her Broncolor Para FB could actually reduce the amount of post production on her models. That statement seemed a bit bold when I first heard it; usually I credit a great makeup artist for awesome skin texture rather than a specific light. I've never used a ring flash

The Canon 5D MkIII and the Nikon D800 are two of the hottest cameras on the market right now. In this video commercial photographer Nathan Elson joins up with The Camera Store's Chris Niccolls to see how these two cameras stack up in the image quality department. Enjoy!

If you enjoy looking at fashion images, then the photography duo Sofia Sanchez & Mauro Mongiello should be on your radar. They are ranked as among the top fashion photographers on Model.com and it's easy to see how their work stands out within one of the most saturated fields of photography. In their latest campaign shoot for clothing designer Anna Sui, Sanchez and Mongiello have one of the simplest lighting setups ever: just a single gridded Profoto head.

Rick Genest (aka Zombie Boy) is nothing if not intense. The 26-year-old Canadian fashion model is tattooed head to toe to look like a decomposing corpse, representing “the art of the rotting cadaver.” Genest, who you may recognize from Lady Gaga’s “Born This Way” video, spent over 6 years and thousands of dollars on his body art project, so who better to star in a commercial for tattoo-cover-up cosmetic company Dermablend?

Hasselblad Master, Joao Carlos, was featured on the Profoto Blog last week for his free falling studio images. That's right, studio images. Not underwater images. I met Joao in NYC last fall at PDN PhotoPlus and fell in love with his portfolio right away. He always lights his subjects with a minimalist approach and his workflow is powerful and consistent.

This is a series of videos that make up a fascinating 90-minute documentary about the great Richard Avedon. It's called "Richard Avedon: Darkness and Light," and first aired back in 1995 as part of the American Masters Series. If you're like me, you could spend hours watching things like this.

I've always been a huge fan of Annie Leibovitz's work. I hear she's one of the hardest photographers to work for - as it probably should be. She can make even Lady Gaga, Queen of Eccentric, look elegant for Vanity Fair's January 2012 issue. While this video doesn't explain much about her lighting technique or how she achieved each photograph, watching Annie behind the scenes is always a treat. Most of her lighting situations in this video are very simple using only a Photek Umbrella and a diffusion cloth attached to it.