ERIN - Experiment | Beauty | Portraits

A few weeks ago I was in Melbourne and got to work with Erin again. This was our third shoot together and easily the most fun. We tried a heap of different ideas and styles that ranged from simple beauty shots to shadow play and nudes.

The advantage of working with a model you have shot before is a lot of ideas flow faster, as you both know how to communicate with each other more effectively. It also means that trust has been built up in previous sessions and therefore nerves can be lesser (but never all together).

So, we have a lot of different images from the shoot. Today I am posting 2 different styles. Above is a beauty portrait. This shot has been retouched to give a smooth perfect look after stepping out of the shower and dried off a bit. The skin needs to be almost flawless, but still believable. More in-line with what you expect from fashion magazines. Stick an expensive necklace onto Erin, and you would have an advert ready image.

The second image is from in the shower. This image has very little work done on it from the actual captured photo. I used what is called a Gobo (Go Between) to create the colour and shadows through the shower door and finally onto Erin. A Gobo is a light that has something in front of it to alter the look (colour, shadows, etc) and then is focused using a lens, so it keeps the detail and doesn't become a mess. In this case the Gobo is a slide with blue and purple colours on it. The light hits the glass door which has some steam and water on it, creating shadows and something for the light to reflect off. Lastly, the rest of the light hits Erin and fills in the rest of the image. For me this was an example of trying something completely new because Erin trusted me enough to experiment. 

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Something totally different

So this is really just a taste of some of the amazing images we created together. I am looking forward to showcasing more of them in the future.

It's All In The Eyes

One of the biggest things for me when shooting portraits is the eyes. I learnt while working in video and cinema that selling a shot involves a lot of things, but if the eyes don't convince you, then everything can fall apart. When shooting portraits, this is something I really look for. You don't get the luxury of 24+ frames per second to tell a story. You only get one.

I am still learning how this works, and dare say that it's something that I'll never stop learning. 

Above is a shot of Erin, my talented friend that has helped me so much to learn this in the shoots we have done together.

ERIN

After an amazing weekend learning from one of Australia's top fashion photographer Peter Coulson, I was feeling inspired to try out some of the things I had learnt.

Erin and I have been talking about doing a shoot for ages, but schedules never seemed to met up till now. It was advantageous that it was after a weekend with Peter.

So we just tried different things out. Varied up the clothes and the lighting. Nothing more than a fun learning experience for both of us. The post-processing was a continuation of trying new things out. Normally I would stick to one style for the set, but as we varied up the shoot quite a bit, I have opted to also vary up the end results as well.

Big thank you to Kel Barrett who came in and did make up.