So a few weeks ago I found sometime to shoot a personal project, a summer inspired beauty shoot. The idea behind the shoot was to focus on summer and to play with bright and vibrant colors. Prior to the shoot a spent days experimenting with new techniques and different ways of introducing color into my shoot.
In the final part of the Dramatic Beauty Portrait Tutorial, we will look at how I do my Black and White conversion. This image is a dramatic image so it calls for a punchy and high-contrast black and white conversion. In this tutorial, I will show you how I stack blending modes and adjustment layers to get my image exactly where I want it.
In my opinion, mastering negative dodge and burn is the key to any beauty retouch. There are many steps and many hours that go into a great retouch, but negative dodge and burn is as essential, if not more so, than any of them. The term "negative dodge and burn" is one that I first heard from fellow retoucher Pratik Naik.
In Part 3 of the Dramatic Beauty Portrait Tutorial, we will finally get into the first main step of the skin retouching process. Basic skin retouching involves addressing subtle skin and texture issues on our portrait images. We will not only look at techniques for skin retouching in Photoshop, but also discuss the theory behind our decision process during the retouching process.
A couple of weeks ago I had a chance to shoot with the Broncolor Siros Monolights for the first time. Until now, my light of choice has been the Profoto D1. I, like many of you, have seen reviews on Broncolor's new monolight, and like many of you as well, have been a bit skeptical about their delve into competing with Profoto's D1 and B1 Series for the high-end monolight market.
In Part 1 of our Dramatic Beauty Portrait Tutorial, we looked at the lighting setup, gear breakdown, and shooting of our dramatic beauty shoot. In Part 2 of the tutorial we will now look at two different ways of exporting and preparing your image for retouching. The first method involves creating versions in Lightroom and exporting directly to Photoshop.
This is Part 1 in what will be an 8 part series for a dramatic beauty portrait. In the series of tutorials, we will go through everything from the gear used, to the lighting setups, and all the way through the complete retouching process. In Part 1, I will breakdown my gear list used for the shoot and I will thoroughly go through my lighting setup.
In Part 1 of the "Start to Finish Fashion Editorial Retouching" tutorial, we looked at how to clean up a white background, how to liquefy clothing to achieve a better fit, and how to clone and heal out distracting elements in our editorial image.
I was originally going to call this article "five things I learned from coffee with John Schell" but in typical Schell fashion, our meet up involved Pho which doesn't mix too well with coffee. The former Fstoppers writer and current Los Angeles-based photographer has had one of the quickest rises to popularity that I've seen in photography in quite some time.
Shooting in harsh sunlight is always a challenge. Recently I shot a test while out on a trip in Los Angeles. Due to scheduling we had to start shooting around 4 p.m., so we were dealing with hard sunlight. In this post we will look at five different setups you can use to shoot in and manipulate these less than ideal lighting conditions.
Post-Production and Retouching is just as much an integral part of creating a great image or series of images as pre-production and the actual shoot, especially when you are shooting for a client and not just for yourself. Each genre of imagery, advertising, beauty, fashion, etc. has a slightly different set of rules and parameters when it comes to retouching.
Dana Pennington is a Los Angeles-based Fashion photographer. He recently moved to become a permanent resident in Los Angeles, from his home town Denver, Colorado. I had the chance to sit down with Pennington during my first trip to L.A., over the past weekend, and talk to him about his journey into the fashion photography industry.
I will soon be releasing a start-to-finish retouching tutorial video here at Fstoppers on my most recent fashion editorial photoshoot. But before I do, I wanted to start warming our readers up with a complete gear list.
Having a process is one of the most essential keys to success in art, design, and photography. In this tutorial we will look at what to do after we have completed all of the major changes to our portrait retouch. In the beginning of our retouching we will commonly address larger issues like blemishes, distractions, tone smoothing, dodging and burning, and color corrections.
Matthew Jordan Smith has gained a reputation as one of the industry's top fashion photographers and also as one of the leading photography educators. Those of us who have seen Smith teaching or in interviews have been left with the same impression: he is a photographer and instructor that is forthcoming, sincere, and passionate.
Knowing when to stop is the hardest lesson to learn for those new to retouching. In this tutorial we will look at how to recover lost texture and over smoothed skin tones, even when your file has been flattened. In this image the texture has been over retouched resulting in a significant loss in the skin texture. The transitions between skin tones have also been slightly overdone.
PRO.edu has released its newest tutorial, "The Complete Guide to Product Photography and Retouching." This in-depth tutorial features over 20 hours of content on shooting and retouching, taught by Tony Roslund. The tutorial is currently available and being sold with a $25-off early-bird discount, this week only.
In Branding and Logo Design for Photographers Part 1, we looked at the initial steps of self-analyzing, market research, and competitive analysis. Now we move into the designing of our photography brand logo with possibly the most important step: identify and separate.
Being fiscally successful as a photographer requires more then just taking great pictures. Branding, marketing, and promoting are huge aspects of the business of photography. One of the first steps photographers often take when starting their business is designing a logo, but this can often be a mistake.
After 13 years of being involved in academia as either a student or instructor, I stumbled upon possibly the best way to save big on photography gear: educational pricing discounts.
Learning to find the perfect light is something that takes time and experience. But what do you do when the perfect light isn't there? Shooting in hard sunlight isn't always the most flattering or ideal situation. Don't settle for less than ideal results, bad light doesn't have to mean bad images.
Shooting on a clean white backdrop can be one of the more complex in-studio lighting setups around. Properly exposing for full lengths while giving your models room to work can require four or more extra lights and considerable amount of setup time.
Staying motivated and feeling creative becomes a challenge at some point or another for all us. As professional photographers, we are paid to create inspired work on a daily basis. So how do we fight back when feeling unmotivated and when we are losing that creative spark? Here are five techniques for getting refocused and remotivated.
The School Sessions is a novel idea and concept started by the photography community in an effort to help raise $200,000 on April 12, 2015 for building a school in Mellier, Haiti. The students of this community were greatly affected by the 7.0 earthquake that occurred in 2010.
Building a quality portfolio can be an expensive endeavor, especially if you don't budget and carefully consider your costs. Putting together professional quality shoots on a budget can be challenging.
