Studio

White Studios pt.3 - Samantha

 
 

Here's my last set of photos of Samantha, from our photoshoot at White Studios. It's been hard to choose only a small number of photos from the 500-odd I kept - but at the same time it's also been hard to decide on any which I think are 'good enough' to show! The more I look at my photos, the more I think that they're uninteresting or not good enough or the models will hate them!! Nevertheless, here are some photos I took.

I've been taking time in the retouching on each of these - portraits are a bit harder than my typical travel shots, as they require individual care and attention to small details, rather than the basic colour, tone, cropping etc type corrections i make to most travel photos. So it's important to carefully self-edit and select which photos have promise before you spend the time post-processing.

I'm still rather slow in Photoshop, as I've previously worked almost entirely in Adobe Lightroom, but i'm learning a lot. I'm not making any major changes of course - just touch ups - but i'm still testing lots of different techniques. Luckily there is no shortage of free instruction on the internet (of highly variable quality). One method I've learnt recently which is working well is Frequency Separation, if anyone is interested in trying some retouching!

I hope to create a consistent style as i take more portraits - but for now I'm just shooting and showing what I like at the time. I do like some things in particular though - using graphic and angular shapes - things that look not 'uncomfortable', but at least 'interesting'... and I like soft, diffuse light so I'm quickly building up a list of (expensive) softboxes and octabanks that I 'need' to use... anyone got a spare 190cm octa?

Thanks very much to everyone that helped shoot or be shot: Sven, Anupam, Celeste, Priya and Samantha! I learnt a lot from this exercise, and hope to do it again soon. We're currently looking for interesting locations, rather than a photo studio for next time.

So get in touch if you know of or have access to any sort of cool room / warehouse / dingy basement / abandoned building / lounge bar / anywhere fun :)

 

White Studios pt.1 - Samantha

Samantha. Click to enlarge.

Last Saturday I spent the day shooting at White Studios in Kingsland, with good friends Sven (the Bokeh Monster) and Annupam. 

This is Samantha, who was kind enough to pose for me.

Coming soon will be some photos of Priya, who was equally kind to model, both with a range of interesting makeup styles done by Celeste. 

Thanks to everyone involved for a fun but tiring day of shooting, evidenced by 2 out of 3 photographers having a nap during the movie that followed our celebratory pizza and beer...

 

On Editing

I managed to hit my shutter button over 900 times this day, which seemed like a good idea at the time - but then how to narrow it down to only a couple of favourites to publish? And how do I know which ones the models and make up artist will like? I want to give the other participants some results worth their time.

I spent several hours deleting rejects and playing with colours, but made no progress until I decided just to retouch and publish the ones I personally liked best. I don't know exactly what makes a 'good' fashion/beauty/glamour portrait - I know what I like, but maybe that isn't what the others were expecting.

So these are the style I like as a photographer, whether others do or not - of course I hope they do! And I have 500 more shots they can choose from later if they don't like these ones. Or maybe I just won't be invited again next time..

So these few images are my favourites of Samantha, all from a simple natural light setup against the white studio wall. I have photographs of her from several other lighting setups as well, which I shall publish in due course. Some of those show quite different looks, so hopefully we can find some images useful for both her portfolio as well as mine!

So ends my first post on my studio photography, part 1 of perhaps 3 from White Studios. Next up will be photos of Priya, followed by different looks for Samantha, all with equally riveting commentary..