Friday, February 27, 2015

Before and After Business Portrait


Ashley Before and After

Ashley is a Toronto-based illustrator who specializes in cut-paper collage. Her illustrations have appeared in a variety of magazines and children’s publications, as well as posters, packaging, clothing lines, animations and set design. When her work is exhibited or published she is often required to provide a contributor profile photo, so she wanted a portrait that would depict her as the professional she is.

In Ashley's case, I didn't have to do a whole lot to "make her pretty" as she is pretty already, and doesn't really struggle with being unphotogenic. However, there are still a few important differences between the before and the after shots.

To begin, we looked at the wardrobe she brought and chose a solid coloured, structured and flattering jacket, which would look good on her, and look appropriately professional for an artist. Then we looked through her jewellery and chose a necklace and earrings pairing that would complete her look in an understated way, and not draw attention away from her face. Ashley arrived with her hair and make-up done as she would normally do them. So once we'd steamed the jacket and she was changed, I asked her to have a seat so I could take her picture. See frame 1 above left. Not bad, really! It's sweet, but it's a little tentative.

So what did we do? 

1) I added a touch of eyeliner, and some lip gloss, which didn't take away from her natural look, just enhanced it, and made her look a little more grown up. (Oh, to have the problem of looking too young! But too youthful a look can be a disadvantage.) We used a bit of hair spray to subtly style her hair. I am not a hair stylist or a make-up artist, but in the absence of professional stylists, I can help. 

2) We changed Ahley's posture and position to give some energy, confidence and shape to her body.

3) Then we worked together to elicit a confident, friendly, approachable expression.

4) Once we selected the winning final shot, I got to work retouching. What was needed was going to be subtle but important: a. hair: shape, hair on shoulder, fly aways, and split ends that catch highlights, b. lapel which was sort of sticking up in the selected frame because of a stubborn crease, c. cleaning up of eyes, and lightening under eyes, d. teeth (just a very slight whitening), e. skin: winter wreaks havoc on delicate facial skin making it dry and less smooth than it would be under ideal circumstances, and f. crop (I cropped both the before and after so they'd look more similar as possible for comparison purposes). 

Now Ashley has a strong, professional looking headshot.

I want to finish off here by sharing one of the shots we got at the very end of the shoot.

 
After the more formal portrait, we did a few looser, more casual portraits, which in Ashley's case would also be very appropriate for her personal profile pic. By the time we got to these, Ashley had changed into more casual wardrobe and she was able to be even more relaxed in front of the camera; her energy and down to earth personality really shine through. I look at these pics and I feel her smile...it's contagious...and ideally that's the effect these shots will have on all the viewer's of her portrait.


Thursday, February 26, 2015

Makemepretty.photography

My new business card art featuring over 90 tiny portraits, although you can't actually see all of them :)

Welcome to my new blog!

After over twenty years of working with clients to represent their brands with photography, I have finally been able to distill my own brand into a distinct and resonant phrase (O.K. two phrases, but they are slight variations on a clear theme)! I'm so happy!

I am now the proud and excited owner of Makeitpretty.photography and Makemepretty.photography.

As I was thinking back to what it was that drew me to photography in the first place, and what has kept me interested all these years, I realized that for me, it's pretty simple…I like to make things and people, "look pretty". It's a simplification. But it's basically true. Photography for me was never about capturing reality. It was a way of taking a subject and making it look better.

There are all kinds of ways to expand and elaborate upon on the idea of taking a mundane or, in some cases, not very photogenic subject, be it an object or a person, or a dog, or an insect, and working with lighting, props, backgrounds, sets etc., etc. to bring out their texture, beauty, character, colour, etc., but it all comes down to what I think my clients really want from me. And that is, to "make it (them) look pretty", or "make me (her,him,them) look pretty."

My main website is still at hollinrake.com.
It can also be accessed using  kathrynhollinrake.com
as well as makemepretty.photography
and makeitpretty.photography

I've done a slight reorg. on it, so now the categories are:

PORTFOLIOS
ABOUT
ABOUT (really)
CORPORATE PHTGY
    Corp Intro
    Corp p.2
    Corp p.3
    Corp p.4
    Testimonials
BLOG
Makemepretty BL (link to this blog)
LINKS (this is new)
CONTACT

Here on my makemepretty blog I'll concentrate on the theme of making people look pretty. And yes, this can apply to women or men (guys…just substitute "handsome" or "gorgeous" for "pretty"…for simplicity's sake I had to pick one word...I'm giving you the benefit of the doubt and trusting you get it!).

And I'm just going to throw this out there…I'm going to be looking for some willing subjects for before and afters to post here. This means I'll give you an unbeatable deal on a portrait in return for being able to show the world what you looked like before and after finessing/retouching. Please e-mail me at kathryn@hollinrake.com or call me at 416 465-8280 if you would like to participate.

Thanks for reading and I hope you'll revisit!

Tuesday, February 24, 2015

Coming soon!

Hi there! Welcome to my new blog featuring news, views, information about, and examples of my corporate and lifestyle branding portraiture. Thanks for your patience while I update my website and get this blog going. Please feel free to e-mail me if you'd like to me notify you when my first post goes live. 

In the meantime, please contact me by phone or e-mail for info, availability and pricing.

Thanks so much for visiting!

Kathryn