High school senior images have come a long way. Cool actions, borders, themes ect. But the one thing that seems fairly consistent is the the high level of retouching on the skin. I realize that teenagers can have bad skin but I see it on good skin also. I call it “puddin”
I just crave skin, freckles and all. I’m guilty myself of sometimes overdoing skin. But if the model has good skin I try and keep retouching to a minimum.
I use Digital Air Brush Pro for retouching and have been very happy with it. My goal is to use nothing if I can. Andrea has great skin and this image will show that off to clients.
If you want to shoot for agencies keep the skin softening down to a bare minimum. Better that you don’t do enough versus too much.
This was shot at my workshop with one of the backgrounds we made during class. We put a 4×8 ft Styrofoam board behind her then a ladder with sand bags to hold it up. I’m standing on a medium ladder and shooting down on her. If you use your backdrops free floating versus attached to a back wall you can “alley” shoot it. Put some kind of board behind it and it feels like a wall. New models feel very comfortable standing up against walls versus free floating.
Andrea really wants to practice with her hands and she asks if she can. She seems determined to master beautiful hands. I would have her work with her back hand versus her front hand. I try and capture a bit of arm also so it doesn’t look like a hand is creeping in from nowhere, as if belonging to someone else. The front hand is usually just too hard, especially with strobes because it receives more light. So for a new model I would tend to stick with the back hand…just sayin
Specs: north window light with tri flector.
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