Don Giannatti (aka wizwow)
Studio Portrait: A simple approach: Cheyenne by Don Giannatti
This is a straight forward portrait of a lovely lady. Cheyenne has great skin, and a beautiful face. I wanted a good, straight, simple headshot after making her stand in freezing water... LOL. Anyway, it always comes back to the headshot for me. I can shoot headshots all day. (Time was I could shoot Tequila shots all day... but that's a story for another time.)
There is nothing more fun than a pure beauty portrait and sometimes you can do it so simply. This is a beauty dish in the same position as the study here:
www.lighting-essentials.com/setups/beauty_dish1/index.html
However, you can see that we have added fill on both sides, and below. There is a shiny board on her lap and that is filling the bottom of the chin.
The background I wanted was bright white and I wanted it to wrap a bit around her. I set the big softbox as the background and it is about 2 feet in back of her and set to one stop brighter than the beauty dish. That was enough to blow the edges and wrap around the hair and shoulders. You can also see its effect as the highlight on her chin line camera right. I love that... I really do.
(Strobist method: simple beauty dish to front with fill cards as necessary. Add a shower curtain scrim - ironed to get all wrinkles out - behind the model. A second speedlight should give you plenty of soft wrap around back light. You will have to have enough room to make sure the flash is far enough back that it covers the area you are shooting so as not to create a hot spot. )
Because of the built in flare, ou may end up with a bit softer image, but that can easily be remedied in PS.
Photoshop: skin retouched, background duplicated and 'flared' a bit more to really give a feeling of blastin back light. Muted layer under color layer with opacity set to 50% for a flatter color pallet, highlight / shadow painting and a tad bit of grain to give it some life.
Studio Portrait: A simple approach: Cheyenne by Don Giannatti
This is a straight forward portrait of a lovely lady. Cheyenne has great skin, and a beautiful face. I wanted a good, straight, simple headshot after making her stand in freezing water... LOL. Anyway, it always comes back to the headshot for me. I can shoot headshots all day. (Time was I could shoot Tequila shots all day... but that's a story for another time.)
There is nothing more fun than a pure beauty portrait and sometimes you can do it so simply. This is a beauty dish in the same position as the study here:
www.lighting-essentials.com/setups/beauty_dish1/index.html
However, you can see that we have added fill on both sides, and below. There is a shiny board on her lap and that is filling the bottom of the chin.
The background I wanted was bright white and I wanted it to wrap a bit around her. I set the big softbox as the background and it is about 2 feet in back of her and set to one stop brighter than the beauty dish. That was enough to blow the edges and wrap around the hair and shoulders. You can also see its effect as the highlight on her chin line camera right. I love that... I really do.
(Strobist method: simple beauty dish to front with fill cards as necessary. Add a shower curtain scrim - ironed to get all wrinkles out - behind the model. A second speedlight should give you plenty of soft wrap around back light. You will have to have enough room to make sure the flash is far enough back that it covers the area you are shooting so as not to create a hot spot. )
Because of the built in flare, ou may end up with a bit softer image, but that can easily be remedied in PS.
Photoshop: skin retouched, background duplicated and 'flared' a bit more to really give a feeling of blastin back light. Muted layer under color layer with opacity set to 50% for a flatter color pallet, highlight / shadow painting and a tad bit of grain to give it some life.