i took this photo in my living room as i was trying my new strobes.
i used 3 strobe- 1 as main light above and left with octagon 120 cm- 1 silver reflector below her to fill the shadows, the second strobe was behind her with one small grid soft box and the last strobe was fired from the right side into the wall for the gradient background!
i have edit this photo using only photoshop and tried new method that i learned recently!
hope you like her! i was actually my first try with strobes and first try to change my living room into a studio :)
I would love to know what you think!
Beautiful work done. I love it, only thing is i feel the cropping is too tight, showing her shoulders and arm would for me compliment the photo. But i love the job.
Thank you Michael! :)
I agree with Michael Marshall. You have a beautiful shot of a beautiful woman. Yes the cropping of shoulders and hat are not right for me and cropping the little bit of wrist would have been better or including the horizontal of her arm. Her make-up and airbrushing all look great.
I might have shown a bit of neck/upper chest to mirror the vertiical skin of her arms but not to worry, a lovely shot, well executed. Well done.
PS what Photoshop technique did you learn recently/use?
Thank you Ian! :)
and about the technique... for the skin is frequency separation, also, i think that after along time i finally know better about dodge and burn and where i need to burn or dodge!
and finally i learn some toning in PS i usually edit in LR.
I wish I had your skills in Photoshopping, great job.
Thanks for the reply.
When shooting beauty (or any studio work for that matter), try tethering your camera to your computer. Using a software such as Capture One could help you avoid having blown out highlights like you have here on the beanie. If you cannot shoot tethered, enable the highlights alert on your camera, it'll be better than nothing.
Like the others, I feel like the cropping and posing could have been improved to make the shot stronger. The hand showing up on the bottom is more a distraction than anything else.
I would have lit her face slightly more to make it the hero of the shot. As it is, I don't really know if it's the hair, the clothing or the makeup that is supposed to be the subject of the image.
Out of curiosity, what techniques did you use for retouching the skin? The image isn't big enough here to judge the quality of the skin retouching, but it seems like it's lacking detail. Kind of like when IHP (inverted high-pass) is used or when the lower frequency of frequency separation is altered. But I might be wrong, it might just be the resolution/compression :)
Quentin thank you for you detail response and your tip!!
I just learned frequency separation so maybe you are right, in my pc in pull resolution i see the same details in the skin but you know maybe like any first and second time using new technique i went to far...
about the tethering... i really want to use that in my photoshoots but god knows why i just can't!
i have mac pro running el capitan and it seems that there is problem with tethering and this version... i have tried every tether software there is but it still doesn't work! maybe i enable the highlights alert on my camera like you offered!
Thank you again! :)
Hey Oren :) Frequency separation is a good starting point, but not what you want to use for high-end results, especially when dealing with beauty shots. Try to have a look at this video for cleaning up skin: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SeVAUaijIjY
I just updated to El Captain and Capture One 9 works like a charm. I've done a couple of shoots tethering either my 5DIII or my 1DX and had no problem. However, I used a ThetherTools (https://www.tethertools.com/) USB cable. It seems like I always had disconnecting issues during my shoots when using the cable included in the box by Canon or other USB cables :/ Cannot figure out why… but since I bought a TetherTools cable I have had no issue whatsoever.
great!! maybe it is also my problem...
i'll try it!
thank you ! :)