Some of you may remember Kayla from a shoot I did at the start of the year but since then she went from blonde to a red head and wanted some new shots showing off the new locks. Neither of us smoke but both of us wanted shots with it so that's how that happened.
Skin texture is 150% there so yea, please don't waste your time or mine haha. Strobist info for each shot is in the description of each shot on flickr so just follow the link. As per the usual, if you like my work, please visit and like my facebook page below. Thanks guys!
My favorite would be #1 by far (despite the white colored smoke in front of the neck). Has a firey, passionate look to it ! Cool.
In #4 the catch light of the dish lets the eyes appear dead, not ? The fingernails don't quite line up in that shot with the racy theme in my opinion. The last shot looks like an anti-valentine's ad. Haunting ...
Thanks guys! By 150% I mean there's no doubt that skin texture is present. I have a lot of people who to be honest, don't know how to retouch and seem to think and chime in that skin texture isn't there. So I start all my threads stating that texture is 150% there so there's no need to say it isn't. Hope that clears it up
fgransee wrote:
My favorite would be #1 by far (despite the white colored smoke in front of the neck). Has a firey, passionate look to it ! Cool.
In #4 the catch light of the dish lets the eyes appear dead, not ? The fingernails don't quite line up in that shot with the racy theme in my opinion. The last shot looks like an anti-valentine's ad. Haunting ...
Thanks! I thought the same thing about the eyes in #4 but it was just a product of the smoke being reflected off the light source and that reflecting off the eye. I learned quickly that when working with smoke, you have to be very patient as far as where the smoke drifts off to and how it might cars some slight shadows on the skin depending on the density. This coupled with the fact that it was in my home studio with no ventilation and I have asthma haha.
goddardca wrote:
Thanks guys! By 150% I mean there's no doubt that skin texture is present. I have a lot of people who to be honest, don't know how to retouch and seem to think and chime in that skin texture isn't there. So I start all my threads stating that texture is 150% there so there's no need to say it isn't. Hope that clears it up
Thanks for explaining what 150% meant. I didn't understand it either.
That being said, I think #2 and #3 have the skin processing overdone IMHO. While there might be texture, it is so uniform it looks fake. No one's skin is that uniform in color or texture. Bringing back some of the non-uniformity would make the skin look more natural. The other images aren't as uniform in color and texture and therefore look more believable. Obviously this is a person thing and if this is your style and you like it, then keep going with it. I just wouldn't take the skin processing that far myself in those two images.
Thank you for the insight. It's definitely subjective and understand and respect that. It's nice to see someone chime in that understands the difference between uniform tonality and skin texture and how the two work together to create the skin itself. It's definitely subjective like you mentioned. There are certain skin types, and lighting setups that lend itself to this even by doing very minimal skin retouching and this was one of them. As you can tell, once I moved the same light source and modifier to the right like in 4 and 5 then the skin takes on a whole different type and is easier to distinguish despite doing the same type and amount of post processing. Just in case anyone wants to know I use the combination of frequency separation and d&b for skin tonality. Thanks again for chiming in. I'm never against c&c and welcome it as long as I can learn from the person. I'll try and redo the one's you mentioned and scale back on the freq sep a bit and see how it comes out.
