colour beauty shoot ideas

These are just some of the images I have gathered together when looking for inspiration of my colour beauty shoot. These images feature bright skin, with soft lighting and a key stand out feature, in most cases a bold lip colour. Currently i think i want to go for a bold, crisp red lip to contrast the softness of the rest of the image. I want the hair to be loose and slightly messy, but overall the main feature to be the lips, as they are in most of the images above. 

Practice in Lesson

Above, are some of the practice images that myself and my course mates took. We used a variety of techniques and lightings for these pictures, in order to understand their effect and figure out what we could possibly use for our shoot. The third image for example illustrates a harsh light, typically flattering for men. In that image we used a plane bulb. Where images such as the 2nd and 4th ones, we used a soft box, which gives a far more softer, lighter look. Additionally we experimented with reflectors, you can see this in image number 4, it's effects are clear, and the image is a lot brighter than the others.

High Key and Low Key

Today in our technical lesson we experimented with lighting, and the effects it has on the mood of photos, we also learnt about high key and low key lighting techniques. 

High-key Lighting

High-key lighting simply refers to images that are mostly bright, with a range of light tones and whites and not very many blacks or mid-tones. In high-key photography, tones that generally would have been mid-range become much brighter, near-white tones become white and white becomes, well, white. This style of lighting was originally developed for films and television, back when the technology wasn’t very good at capturing high contrast ratios. Today high key is purely an artistic decision – photographers and filmmakers choose it when they want an image or story to be upbeat, optimistic or youthful.

I Come in Peace by Flickr user jDevaun

A common misconception is that a high-key image does not need to have a true black. And while that is sometimes true, high-key images can and often do have very small amounts of black. These very small areas of black and middle tones will prevent the image from looking washed out. That small point of black – your model’s pupils, for example, or a shadow under her hair – can mean the difference between a high-key image and one that is just plain overexposed.

How to capture a high or low-key image

A lot of people will create high-key and low-key images in post-processing, but the best way to get a successful photo with either of these lighting styles is to do it with your camera. This means either having your studio light set up for high or low-key images, or waiting until the light outdoors cooperates with you. 

Untitled by Flickr user paul goyette

Studio lighting for high-key photography

A basic studio lighting set up for high-key photography consists of a key light and a fill light, with your key light two times the brightness of the fill. The background should be lit independently–preferably with two lights positioned three to five feet away at 45-degree angles. These background lights should be at least one stop brighter than your subject lighting. This will result in the blown-out background that you’re looking for in a high-key image.

High-key images can also be obtained in the studio with a pastel-colored background, though white is more common and generally simpler to work with. As for your model, you can certainly achieve a high-key effect regardless of what she’s wearing, but you may find yourself more satisfied with your work if she’s dressed in lighter colors or in white.

Natural lighting for high-key photography

Shades of Grey by Flickr user dibytes

You don’t need studio lighting to capture a high-key image, but you’ll need to have your bag of tricks ready. The ideal outdoor lighting situation for high-key images is flat light such as what you’ll get on an overcast day, though ideally a brighter day vs. one where, say, there’s an ominous thunderstorm on the horizon. Flat light by itself is probably not going to be enough, though, you’ll also need a reflector to fill in your shadows.

Backgrounds in outdoor settings are trickier, too, since you can’t just rely on a brightly-lit white backdrop to give you that high-key effect. Instead you need to choose a simple background that is free from dark tones and shadows. Meter for your background and then set your exposure compensation to +1. Shoot, then bracket to an exposure compensation of +2 and shoot again. You may need to go as high as +3 before you achieve the right effect – it’s really more of an art than a science, and experimentation will probably yield the best results.

Using post processing to tweak

Ideally, you don’t want to have to rely on post-processing to create a high-key image, but you can use it to improve your high-key photos or potentially create high-key images out of photos that were shot under favorable conditions but may not yet qualify as “high-key”.

There are a lot of different ways to achieve this in post-processing, but in general you’re going to be adjusting the curves in your image until you get that high-key range. Here’s one way of doing it in Photoshop, by first converting your image to black and white (though the black and white conversion is of course not required):

First desaturate your image by going to image-> adjustments-> hue/saturation. Move the saturation slider until it reaches -100. Now you have a black and white image. Next, go to Layer -> Adjustment -> Curves and play with the curves until you get the effect you’re looking for. Depending on how your subject was lit, this may be an “S” shape or a bow. Remember that you’re looking for very few blacks and midtones with lots of brighter tones and whites. You want to keep important details and not have any glaring hot spots on your subject.

At this point some photographers like to soften the image with the Gaussian blur filter. To do this, first create a duplicate layer, name it something obvious (like “blur,”) then go to Filter -> Blur -> Gaussian Blur and adjust the blur radius to somewhere in the neighborhood of four pixels. Now double click the blur layer and adjust the opacity slider down to 40 or 50 percent, until you get a softening effect that appeals to you. There are other ways to do this, of course (there always are), so if you don’t like this effect you can also set the layer blend mode to overlay, or you can add masking to the blur layer and use your eraser to bring through the areas you want sharp from the layer below.

What you don’t want

High-key does not just mean overexposed. While you are aiming for an overexposed background, you want your subject to have a good range of light tones without any badly blown-out highlights. And on the opposite end of the scale, you don’t want a lot of deep shadows, either. Ideally you will want a very small range of blacks and midtones, with most of your tones in the light or white range.

Eyes - 47/365: B&W Portrait by Flickr user Jer Kunz

What about low-key?

You’ve probably guessed already that low-key light is the opposite of high-key light, the yin to its yang. High-key lighting focuses on light tones and whites; low-key lighting relies on shadows, deep blacks and darker tones, with very few whites and middle tones. The mood is opposite, too – while high-key lighting is hopeful and optimistic, low-key lighting is somber, mysterious and moody, dramatic or even ominous depending on the subject.

High-key images are flatter with less contrast than an image that qualifies as mid-key, which is most of the images that photographers produce. Low key images, on the other hand, tend to have a lot of contrast, with the primary impact coming from the shadows. 

entra in punta di piedi... by Flickr user teobonjour - www.matteomignani.it

Studio lighting for low-key photography

A low-key studio set up is a lot simpler than a high key one. You just need a single light source and a dark or black backdrop. You may find having a reflector on hand can be helpful, too, though in many cases all you will need is that single light source. As a general rule, keep the light off of your back drop and on your subject, but other than that you have a lot of freedom as far as where you choose to place your light source.

White birds by Flickr user photophilde

“Natural” lighting for low-key photography

Natural or non-studio lighting is a bit trickier when you’re trying to shoot low-key. Shooting outdoors at night is always an option, though you will need a very bright light source such as a street light or the headlights of a car to obtain that low-key effect. A flashlight or a campfire could also serve as a light source. Indoors, you can also use light that filters from a bright room into a dark room through an open door.

It is technically possible to shoot a low-key image during the day, too, with a little bit of know-how. First choose a subject that is lit by the sun but is in front of a background that is in shadow. You can add your own background here if you need to with a piece of black velvet or other jet-black material, or you can simply provide the shade for the background. Now meter for the background and set your exposure compensation to underexpose by two or three stops (try both and compare). If there’s not enough contrast between your background and your subject, you can also use an off-camera flash to provide additional light.

Snake Dance by Flickr user Bill Gracey

You many need a tripod to achieve this, so make sure you have one handy whenever you’re out in search of low-key images. Capturing a low-key image during the day may mean closing your aperture and using a faster shutter speed, which may in turn mean you’ll need that tripod to avoid camera shake. At night you’ll need a tripod too, for obvious reasons, but in particular because you will want to avoid turning up your ISO. When you underexpose in low light, you may find that your images contain unwanted noise and banding – the lower your ISO, the less you will encounter this problem. 

Shooting in RAW is also an option, since the RAW format captures a broader range of tones and will allow you to capture low-key potentials without having to dramatically underexpose them. With RAW, you can capture the highlights and go back to deepen the shadows in post processing.

Tweaking low-key images in post

As with high-key images, you can’t make every photo into a good low-key image. Most of the work has to be done by your camera – an image with a white or light background, for example, is going to be tough to convert to a low-key photo without some major work with the lasso and paint bucket. But an image shot under the right conditions can be made more dramatic in post processing with a few basic steps, many of which are similar (but opposite) to the steps you take to create a high-key image (these instructions are for black and white–low-key can also be color).

In Photoshop, first desaturate your image by going to image-> adjustments-> hue/saturation. Move the saturation slider until it reaches -100, just as you did when you were tweaking your high-key photo. Now you have a black and white image. Now create a brightness/contrast layer by clicking that little symbol that looks like a cross between a sun and the symbol for yin/yang. Raise both the brightness and the contrast until the image looks like you want it to. Now you can adjust the curves like you did with your high key image, only your S or bow curve will be inverted. You can also selectively lighten or darken parts of your image using the quick select tool. Just as with high-key images, a little experimentation is going to go a long way.

Calla Curves and Shadows. by Flickr user Bill Gracey

What you don’t want

A low-key image is not the same as an underexposed image. Underexposed images tend to be flat, with no good highlights or whites in the image. This is in fact the opposite of what you want in a low-key image. While the image does indeed rely on the shadows for its impact, low-key images need to have high contrast , which means a good white as well as plenty of deep blacks.

http://www.digital-photo-secrets.com/tip/1546/how-lighting-affects-the-mood-of-your-photos/
http://www.digital-photo-secrets.com/tip/3558/using-lighting-style-to-create-mood-high-key-and-low-key-lighting/

black and white beauty shoot ideas

In preparation for my black&white shoot, I did some research and gathered together some inspiration beauty images. Currently for my black and white images I think I want a glossy look/wet look makeup and hair. For the lighting I am thinking something slightly harsh and perhaps a high contrast and exposure making the skin appear darker and highlights more vivid and shiny.

7 Photographs That Changed Fashion!

In todays seminar, to start off our photography inspiration and to get to grips with fashion photography more, we were shown the documentary 'Rankin: Seven photographs that changed fashion'. The documentary explored the impact of photography on fashion. Photographer Rankin has reconstructed seven provocative images by the most influential fashion images of the Twentieth Century including Cecil Beaton's 1934 'Hat Box', and he also takes us on a journey through a brief history of the fashion photograph. . I hadn't seen the documentary before today, but I did know of Rankin, and some of the renowned photographers  he spoke about. I found the documentary really interesting and inspiring and it led me to research some of the photographers more and look in to their work. 
The 7 photographs which Rankin recreated included; an iconic Cecil Beaton image taken in 1934 'Hat Box'; a 1950's Vogue cover by Erwin Blumenfeld; a 1955 image shot by Richard Avedon of 'Dovima with Elephants';a 1963 image of Jean Shrimpton captured by David Bailey; the iconic image of Helmut Newton's, Rue Aubriot, Vogue 1975; Herb Ritts' 'Fred with tyres' taken in 1984 and finally the brash photographer Guy Bourdin, 1970 'Untitled' fashion photograph.

Heidi Klum, Erin O'Connor, Jade Parfitt, Sophie Ellis-Bextor, Tuuli Shipster, Mollie Gondhi, Daphne Guinness and David Gandy are the models for Rankin's shoots, while other contributors include David Bailey and Lillian Bassman.

Here is a short clip from one of my favourite recreations of Rankins...

In 1950 Vogue opened the decade with an abstract January cover piece by Erwin Blumenfeld. Model Heidi Klum licks her lips in Rankin's raunchy version of the Vogue cover femme fatale 

In Rankin's interpretation of the 1955 image of elegant Dovima with Elephants, Erin O'Connor stands in for 1950s aristocratic beauty Dovima, who wore the first Dior dress to be designed by Yves Saint-Laurent.

Typically classic and timeless, this 1963 image by David Bailey originally featured Jane Shrimpton. Bailey was present at the shooting of this remake, posed for by Rankin's girlfriend Tuuli.

British supermodel Jade Parfitt makes a wonderfully angular and androgynous Helmut Newton model in this remake, shot in the original Rue Aubriot in the shadow of Newton's Paris studio.

Herb Ritts' original rugged, available mechanic 'Fred with Tires' was more a celebration of muscle and vein than strictly fashion. Nonetheless, Ritts' has almost become a formula for advertising. Model David Gandy poses.

Rankin chose the fashion designer/socialite/model Daphne Guinness to recreate the iconic look of this image, which I felt was quite random as his other 'recreational models' have had some similarities, but for Guinness, I'm not too sure. The set choice really resembles the one from the original, I don't really like though, the use of the red hoisery against the pink back drop, I think it would have worked that little more effectively if the legs were bare. Rankin's image also references in a way, a kinda of raunchy, s&m feel to it, with the leather waistbelt (or top, I can't really make it out) and with the sexy black heels and red tights which I'm not that keen on, but then again this is a strong reference to Guy Bourdin's work. To be honest this image is my least favourite out of the selection, just because of personal aesthetic choices, but it still really works as an image.

Post production- how far is too far?

Nathalie Croquet

French photographer Nathalie Croquet's project Spoof invites comparisons between ourselves and supermodels. Having worked as a photo editor at Biba and Jean Paul Gaultier, Croquet's no stranger to the fashion world, and in Spoof she inserts herself front and center into ad campaigns, replacing the likes of Kate Moss and Natalia Vodianova. She mimics the poses of high-fashion supermodels and actresses in campaigns for brands like Lancôme, Givenchy, and Isabel Marant. Croquet's costumes and lighting achieve a remarkable similarity to her subject material, getting every little detail. Although the images may appear to have a subtle comic element to them, they portray and bring attention to a much wider issue.


Understanding the amount of extensive photshopping that takes place on virtually every image the media feeds to us was not only shocking, but eye openining as well. While I was in one respect, horrified at the damaging and distorted affects these images have on the public, particularly young people. I was also, some what relieved and found comfort to see before pictures such as those leaked of Beyonce on her loreal campaign photoshoot, displaying the true image and flaws.

Overall I then began to question, how far is too far? While I believe that certain modifications are acceptable and sometimes necessary, such as those on poor skin, under eye circles and stray hairs, I completely disagree with the manufactured, non realistic ideals of beauty that are no doubt unattainable, that the industry present us with through their use of retouching. I think that while some modifications are necessary because they are of temporary flaws, such as poor skin, the amount of retouching that goes  into images today is highly distorting, and often unrecognisable to the first image.

I also assumed that achieving the skills to be able to retouch just like images are retouched today would be extremely difficult, however this soon changed when I discovered the DIY app, Facetune. The images below are the before and after pictures of the images myself and group edited using the app. In all of these images we smoothed the skin, and added 'details' to the eye and also the high points of the face, such as the cheek bones to give a highlighted look. On the image below, we even changed the face shape, bringing in the lower jaw to slim down the face. On the third image, we also changed the colour of the skin, by lower the lighting and decreasing exposure and contrast, giving a tanned look. The colour of the lips were also changed to a blush pink colour. And the 'details' tool was used on parts of the hair to make it stand out more. Overall from 6-8 modifications were made to these images below. 

Reflection-  Initially myself and my group were excited and really enjoyed playing, and experimenting with the editing app. Personally I was happy at first at the final outcome and how much better it looked than the original. However I soon realised that i felt quite disheartened to realise there were so many 'imperfections' with the original image that I didn't realise until I had begun to edit, and get somewhat carried away. Particularly when comparing the two images it is quite upsetting, and annoying that you don't actually look like that, and never will be able to. Also the addictive reality of this app was also revealed as the modification increased from the first image we edited, to the third.

6 poses

Fashion editorial- This photo is part of a series by Spanish photographer, Miguel Goni Aquinaga. I liked this image initially because this model is simply stunning. However, what caught my eye the most is the running theme of minimalist design throughout the series of photographs. She wears a bright white suit, vividly contrasting her dark skin, which under the bright light and against the white background stands out. also the way the light hits the high points of the skin and glows, simply look beautiful. The minimalistic makeup and short hair of the model, also highlights her natural and stripped down beautiful, which I only emphasised by the contrasting black and white effect.



Beauty editorial-This beauty editorial series named 'speckled' featuring in Chloe Magazine, photographed by Alice Ma immediately caught my eye. The unique nature of the models beauty is alluring and intriguing, and yet completely stunning. the contrast of the dark brown speckled freckles ,against the pale white skin is striking. this is accompanied seamlessly by the hair and makeup, which is also quite harsh and bold. the model jet black hair is cut into a straight, cropped bob, with a short, harsh fringe. the dark winged eyeliner, and orange lipstick, as well as the deep contour continue this bold look. despite all of these harsh elements, the soft brows, beautiful skin and soft facial features within the pose promotes the beauty of this image.

Painting- Francoise Nielly is an artist whose work I have always admired and loved. She pushes the boundaries, and breaks the limits with her use of color. Aside from the striking colour used in this portrait, the eyes are what immediately caught my attention. They are compelling and really bring this otherwise, abstract painting, to life. The texture is also interesting.

Illustration- 'Faces' by Artist and illustrator Vince low, creates artistic order from the chaos of pen lines to produce stunning portraits of famous faces. His 'Faces' project began when, as head illustrator at advertising agency Grey, he created three portraits of famous dyslexics to create awareness for the disorder: Pablo Picasso, Albert Einstein and John Lennon. The advertising campaign for the Dyslexia Association was important to Vince, being dyslexic himself. I thought this was an interesting way to draw with pen, making scribbling an art form in its own right. The fact that Low is dyslexic makes the message stronger, proving that anyone with dyslexia can be successful as well. He states: 'In terms of art direction, I was looking for a certain style that could be easily understood yet difficult to execute'

The is just one of the images, captured by photographers Mert and Marcus for Versace's spring 2013 campaign. The stillness of the body and face in this photo is beautiful as it contrasts with the movement in he hair and dress, emphasizing the sereneness of the model. The cold colour of the skin and background, containing blue hues, yet the warmth of the glossy glow of the skin, creates a sultry glamorous series of images, that seamlessly tie in together as an overall collection.

Being an aspiring makeup artist, this image immediately grabbed by attention. the perfection of the pale skin, against the bold jewels used on the eyes and hands, as well as the dark plum lips, creates a slight gothic look to the image.