Joe Gunawan fotosiamo wrote:
I wanted to try out the classic beauty light setup, with my Einstein with gridded beauty dish about 2-3ft above my camera and a reflector below her chin. This is known as clam-shell lighting.

I'm usually about creative lighting, but I gotta say, I'm loving this simple set up. Background was just a white wall in one of the rooms in my house


Shot with Panasonic GH2 with the Olympus Zuiko 4/3 14-54mm f2.8-f3.5 mkII. Shot in f3.5 near the telephoto end. The model is a friend of mine from my college days:


Style one









Style two

Basically nice riff on a classic technique -

the one thing is,  it looks better if the high-lights fall in the right place

first image is fine

in the other shots the high lights are misplaced -  she is no longer facing in the same orientation to the light

you want highlights near center of forehead, both cheeks and chin when face on.  When she turns her head you don't want the forehead high light to drift to the corner of her forehead

the trick is to have her move her *stance* (and if needed your position) for these different looks but keep her face oriented the same way to the light

You have it set up nicely and the images are nice as they are but since you asked for critique I thought I would let you know what an editor would expect to see.

Cheers

Fotografica Gregor wrote:

Basically nice riff on a classic technique -

the one thing is,  it looks better if the high-lights fall in the right place

first image is fine

in the other shots the high lights are misplaced -  she is no longer facing in the same orientation to the light

you want highlights near center of forehead, both cheeks and chin when face on.  When she turns her head you don't want the forehead high light to drift to the corner of her forehead

the trick is to have her move her *stance* (and if needed your position) for these different looks but keep her face oriented the same way to the light

You have it set up nicely and the images are nice as they are but since you asked for critique I thought I would let you know what an editor would expect to see.

Cheers

Ah, gotcha, I didn't realize that part of it is to keep the highlights in the center like that.  Very useful info!

So, maybe when I want to get a 3/4 view, I should move more to her side and keep her face towards the light to keep the highlights in place? I actually did that for some of them, but maybe not enough

Joe Gunawan fotosiamo wrote:

Ah, gotcha, I didn't realize that part of it is to keep the highlights in the center like that.  Very useful info!

So, maybe when I want to get a 3/4 view, I should move more to her side and keep her face towards the light to keep the highlights in place? I actually did that for some of them, but maybe not enough

It's actually a very fine point -  your basic technique is plenty good.

Try it again along the lines I mentioned and compare for yourself -  see which approach you prefer - it is *your* photography after all -    I fairly often make an *artistic* decision to do it differently than might be expected. Probably the thing that is most often criticized is that I sometimes use different white balances for artistic purpose, very noticeable on skin.....

Take good care

Gregor

Fotografica Gregor wrote:
It's actually a very fine point -  your basic technique is plenty good.

Try it again along the lines I mentioned and compare for yourself -  see which approach you prefer - it is *your* photography after all -    I fairly often make an *artistic* decision to do it differently than might be expected. Probably the thing that is most often criticized is that I sometimes use different white balances for artistic purpose, very noticeable on skin.....

Take good care

Gregor

Thanks! I will try that when I do this again. I did color-grade this, too, from its original white-balanced photo, so I totally get your artistic decisions. It's not always the most color-correct photo that looks best, right?

Stefano Brunesci wrote:
Nice start, but try moving your BD closer to the model for more dramatic falloff and more 'glowing' highlights.

Also, I agree to an extent with Gregor about clamshell lighting - it's really best for straight to the camera poses. For 2/3rds or profile poses, short lighting or clamshell from the direction the model is facing tends to work better. When a model turns her head to the side in a front-on clamshell setup it effectively becomes broad lighting, which is much less flattering for profile and 2/3rds shots.



Just my $0.02

Ciao
Stefano

www.stefanobrunesci.com

+1 very nice

Stefano Brunesci wrote:
Nice start, but try moving your BD closer to the model for more dramatic falloff and more 'glowing' highlights.

Also, I agree to an extent with Gregor about clamshell lighting - it's really best for straight to the camera poses. For 2/3rds or profile poses, short lighting or clamshell from the direction the model is facing tends to work better. When a model turns her head to the side in a front-on clamshell setup it effectively becomes broad lighting, which is much less flattering for profile and 2/3rds shots.



Just my $0.02

Ciao
Stefano

www.stefanobrunesci.com

Ahh, I thought I had my BD close enough. I will try with it closer. As for the short-lighting, I think it would be really good with this model since she does have a somewhat broad chin, as I noticed in my last photo. I will take account into that next time. Thanks Stefano!

Joe Gunawan fotosiamo wrote:
In terms of retouching the skin, what do you guys recommend? I usually use Portrait Professional on a duplicate layer in Photoshop and played around with it, but for this series, the "soften skin" adjustment brush in Lightroom seems to do a better job, so I used that brush in LR before opening it as a PSD on Photoshop for further retouching.

Any good tips on retouching?

The one thing that I notice is the bump on her right cheek that catches the light. I would remove that. I can't find much else that bothers me.

Studio126 wrote:
The one thing that I notice is the bump on her right cheek that catches the light. I would remove that. I can't find much else that bothers me.

Thanks, will do!