Cinema Style Lighting in Beauty Photography By Courtney Dailey Beauty photography often has the appearance of being simple. After all
you’re only shooting the models upper torso and face. How tough could it be? In reality, beauty photography can be one of the toughest genres to shoot! It’s because the subject has to concentrate on her expressions, to the point of micro management while the photographer highlights the product they are trying to sell; the makeup. In order to make a dramatic image with strong light work you must have a subject with great skin, symmetry and confidence. Shooting beauty with new talent can be tough, because shooting beauty is about little movements, versus large smooth transitions, like in fashion.
For this set, I wanted Nydia’s warm caramel skin to glow. She has great skin, so I knew I wanted to shoot with some harsh hot light. Hot lights not only give the skin this skin kissed look, but it also gives me the ability to shoot video while I shoot my stills. That’s a massive plus in the commercial world!
Camera First, the details. I captured this image using a handheld,
but I shouldn’t have done that. Why? Even when shooting with flash, there is always some motion blur. It was shot on a Canon 7D, ISO 800, open at f3.2 on a 28-75 Tamron. Distance from camera to subject was about 4 feet. Nydia was seated behind a TriFlector, so it was fairly easy for her to maintain balance. She did have some trouble with the lights in her eyes, which made it difficult for me to get pictures of her without her squinting. 36
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Lights The best directional light is a spot Fresnel. I like the color the Fresnel gives with a 80C blue
correction filter on it. Normally I’d use an 80B, but I knew I wanted the background to be blue from the strobe I’d be using on the background. If I took too much warmth from the subjects main light (the Fresnel) I’d be dealing with a blue mess.. The Fresnel was open to allow a large circle of area, so the model could move without drastic light changes. I flagged the sides of the light with the light’s barn doors while also using actual flags to the sides of Fresnel to block the light from hitting my background.
Behind Nydia are 1 light, a Westcott Strobelite with an umbrella facing the back wall and a few mirrors tilted to give interesting reflections. There is a mirror to the models left and behind. Since I slightly corrected the main light, it allowed my subject to still be warmly lit, while giving my background a nice blue glow.
This image just required a few tweaks in post, to get the color just where I wanted it. Overall, what can be determined is while shooting strobes, Im very comfortable shooting hand held. But even with cat-like reflexes, a tripod or even a monopod is a must when using continuous lightingz
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