Beauty photography can be a great chance to balance careful, precise lighting and to work on really perfecting precise retouching. This fantastic video will show you the process behind lighting, shooting, and editing this fantastic editorial beauty photo.
Coming to you from Fstoppers alum Michael Woloszynowicz, this great video will show you his process behind lighting, shooting, and editing an editorial beauty photo. The thing I always appreciate about high-level beauty photography is just how precise and carefully crafted both the lighting and the retouching are. In the video, you will see how Woloszynowicz uses a combination of three lights (one main light and two rim lights) along with an array of v-flats to carefully shape the image. Once he moves into post, he uses a fair amount of dodging and burning to fully finish the portrait along with a touch of color toning to give it more mood. The important thing to note is that the dodging and burning does not make extreme adjustments because he was so careful to precisely dial in the lighting in camera, instead of using the post-processing to fine-tune the result rather than create it from scratch. Check out the video above for the full rundown.
Good job, I like the result! Whats also very important is the fact that you have a very good beauty model.
I left a note on Youtube as well. I'm not even going to watch this. I can't believe how far we've gone into a plastic, non-human appearance. My clients don't want this sand-blasted effect.
Watch the video, the "before" is really close to the final image. The Model got some great skin, there is good make up and good light. That is some solid and realistic retouching, all the details are still there, not plastic-filter-cheap skin retouching. Your clients dont want that, because they are not a cosmetic brand ;). The target group for that kind of shooting is very narrow, like make up and cosmetic brands. Nothing for regual headshot-clients.