Women love to look their best, and for this reason I very much enjoy doing beauty shoots. The model is pampered: good makeup and impeccable hair. Add beauty lighting to makes her shine in the photographs. Being able to give someone a picture of themselves looking fabulous is a wonderful feeling.
I don’t know how many shoots Summer had done before, but I’d guess not very many. Working with an inexperienced model takes some patience. More than anything, she has to trust you are going to take good photos. A great advantage of digital is you can show the models some of the pictures on the LCD screen of your camera when you explain to them what you’d like them to do. And they can also give you feedback on what they like. I found it was a good way to establish trust, to show the model you really want to make them look their best. And it is fun to watch them gain confidence as the shoot progresses.
I then switched to another set-up I like. A black background. It totally changes the mood of the photographs. In this set-up I have the usual beauty dish flat-lighting the model, but I also like to backlight the model’s hair. By then, Summer was having fun in front of the camera and it was too bad the shoot had to end. I look forward to the next one.
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