The Modern Geisha
Fashion and Beauty editorials are by far my favourite types of shoots, why? Because as a photographer, I love to feel in control. I enjoy interacting with my models, posing them and feeding of their vibes. I am excited to share the stages I took to come up with the idea for this particular photoshoot.
Before any photoshoot, I start of by creating a mood board. The mood board consists of photographs, words and phrases. I take inspiration from editorials, online searches, my shoot location and most importantly the model (ethnicity, skin tone, hair colour, eye colour, etc). By deciding what I want the image to portray, I narrow my ideas down to a theme.
The inspiration behind my shoot with model Judith Morales were these two beauty photographs below:
THIS
What I like from this photograph was the contrast between the lipstick and the background, the bold colours are striking. Red lips against pale face is perfection. I love how controlled her hair looks and the interaction it has with her face. I don’t really care for the gold eyeshadow, in my opinion it doesn’t really add to the photo, if anything, it distracts.
PLUS THIS
The elements I appreciated from this photograph was, first, the body posture with the shadow on the right side of her face and torso. The model to me, looks innocent yet modern and fresh however, the use of shadows may suggest otherwise. I also like the hair styling, it’s not something you would expect. Its messy and I love it!
EQUALS?
On the day of the shoot, I was going to cornrow Judith's hair back like in the example above but her hair was very thick and I didn’t want to spend a long time in hair and make up (yes, I did her hair and make up too), so last minute I came up with the idea of this hairstyle. It still had the elements of the look I was trying to portray and personally, I think it worked better.
A little about Post Production
Using Adobe Lightroom I do a basic edit, including crop, exposure and white balancing of all the best photos from the shoot. I then take my photos into photoshop to soften the skin, remove any blemishes, enhance bone structure and clean the whites of her eyes. I would show you before and after pictures but I’ll save that for another blog post if you are interested (comment below).
Below are a couple other photographs from my shoot:
Thank you for reading my blog post! If you have any questions about my photography or want to know how I edit my photos please comment below and I will try and be as detailed in my replies as possible. Don’t forget to follow on Facebook and Instagram.
