A young lady contacted me to get some photos to submit to a calendar contest. Here are 6 from our session. I'm not overly happy with the white balance on them. All comments/critiques are welcome.
good work -- the lighting seems good. I don't see anything really wrong with the white balance to be honest. The third one isn't really all that flattering for some reason. The second is my favorite, then the fourth.
Good work Kev, all great poses. I really like the first one, but it looks just a tad underexposed. Like you mentioned, the white balance seems off (a bit cool), especially in the last one. All should be fixable in Photoshop though.
Good job Kev.. I LOVE the lighting and poses. My ONLY nitpik is that I personally dont like plain white for backdrops. Thats just my look on them...I like texture. Great stuff!
Thanks for the comments. As far as white balance I had to manually shift all these out of warmer red tones and into what you see. I may have overcompensated, however, giving some blue/green tones that make some photos appear cool.
Brian,
I like to get a light with a colored gel on the background if I'm shooting white, too; just gives more depth to the background. Unfortunately since we shot this set at my house space was at a premium and I couldn't find a good angle for doing this.
Wow, you've got a good attitude from the model. Looks like you have a good relationship with your models. Great stuff!
Any tips for us mortals on how you put your models at ease and pose them?
Not so keen on the standing poses, look a little stiff.
yea she has her knee(s) locked..never flattering.
Very pretty girl, a couple shots aren't 100% flattering but they're still good. I like the first one the best but maybe not for a calendar. So hard to tell on this old monitor!
P.S. in the standing shots that show here feet I think high heals would greatly improve their appeal!
Here's another from the same session. This photo has a couple of standout issues but I tried to keep it a little warmer in color tone and capture more of the angles of her legs. I didn't get her stretched out enough in this one. Somehow I liked her sitting down with these shoes more than standing, though. Perhaps the hand placement during standing poses bothered me.
How did you get the reflection under the model? I'm using a huge sheet of perspex, over a roll of seemless paper, to create this effect but haven't managed to get this good a reflection yet. It might help that your (lovely) modely has better tanned skin than the girl I tried it with.
I've had numerous requests to explain the materials used in this photoshoot. We used seamless paper (Savage White on B&H). I laid a sheet of 1/2" thick clear plexiglass (4'x8' or 1.3x2.6 meters) on top of the seamless paper. If you look closely you can see some scuff marks in the plexiglass where it has been used before (high heels are murder on this surface). You can buff the marks out but I don't have a buffer and its a true PITA to try doing it by hand. I removed some of the more noticeable marks via layers in Photoshop (add a layer, mask everything out except the offending scuff marks and then use the healing tool on those marks). I used the same method to remove the tell-tale trailing edge of the plexiglass so that you get the reflection of the subject in the foreground but the back of the plexiglass just fades into the curved space of the paper. The subject was approximately 1 meter from the background (I was terribly worried that this would be too close but it worked in these shots).
I've had numerous requests to explain the materials used in this photoshoot. We used seamless paper (Savage White on B&H). I laid a sheet of 1/2" thick clear plexiglass (4'x8' or 1.3x2.6 meters) on top of the seamless paper. If you look closely you can see some scuff marks in the plexiglass where it has been used before (high heels are murder on this surface). You can buff the marks out but I don't have a buffer and its a true PITA to try doing it by hand. I removed some of the more noticeable marks via layers in Photoshop (add a layer, mask everything out except the offending scuff marks and then use the healing tool on those marks). I used the same method to remove the tell-tale trailing edge of the plexiglass so that you get the reflection of the subject in the foreground but the back of the plexiglass just fades into the curved space of the paper. The subject was approximately 1 meter from the background (I was terribly worried that this would be too close but it worked in these shots).
Hope this helps,
Kev
Just a quicky, I may be wrong but you mentioned masking everything out bar the small scratches and scuffs.
If so, you know you can reverse the mask quickly so you just paint over the small scratch?
Kind of seems insignificant but if your doing a lot of them saves hours.
I've had numerous requests to explain the materials used in this photoshoot. We used seamless paper (Savage White on B&H). I laid a sheet of 1/2" thick clear plexiglass (4'x8' or 1.3x2.6 meters) on top of the seamless paper.
Thanks for that Kevin.
That is exactly what I have been doing, even with the same size of plexi.
The difference is I could only afford a think sheet of plexi, 3mm, and I think that is why although I am getting decent reflections, they are not nearly as clear as you have there.
