Diane: Professional Portrait in a "Barn"

Diane Before and After Wardrobe, Posing and Retouching

As the date for the official launch of her new business, and accompanying new website approaches, Diane, an equine health professional, has been building a house. So over the past few months while she has been toiling away in dusty work clothes, neglecting her hair and nails (understandably!) and pretty much foregoing wearing any make-up, she has started to forget the lovely face she used to see in the mirror. Furthermore, thanks to being in a somewhat transitory situation for some time, she has not been able to follow her usual diet and has slipped a bit away from her ideal weight. It being a few years since her last professional portrait she was in need of an update that would feature her current look, but she was not feeling beautiful. Her usual boisterous confidence somewhat temporarily compromised she arrived at the studio not totally sure what we would be able to pull off. 

I had thought that the perfect backdrop for Diane's portrait would be a barn wall, since she works with horses, but it wasn't going to work for us to have to actually go to a barn. Fortunately I had, not long ago, repainted one of my hand painted backdrops to look somewhat reminiscent of a post and beam barn wall. Having shot in barns a few times I knew exactly what feel I wanted for the lighting...I wanted to emulate a flare of late day sun coming in from an out-of-frame entrance and reflecting off the warm stall walls. Very soft, warm and flattering.

Not surprisingly the second Diane started putting on her make-up she was well on her way back to confidence. She had brought a selection of tops of the type she might wear on the job the times she isn't required to wear full scrubs. We liked the light blue in theory, for a hit of colour, but decided it was actually kind of distracting 'on film' (again, we're shooting digitally, so really we mean on the computer monitor, but that doesn't sound right!). The brown sleeveless option she brought turned out to interact much more successfully with the tones of her skin, her hair and the background.

Next, the pose. Regardless of one's figure, poses can be very flattering, or not, slimming or really not. And it's not as if the pose needs to be stiff or formal or restricted to one position...it's more a matter of movement within a loose set of parameters that enhance rather than detract from the natural ability of the person to look 'optimal.'

The one additional  adjustment we made to the lighting before shooting the final files was to take some light away from under Diane's chin, which helped create separation between her face and neck. This as well as the pose angled away from the main light served to emphasize and define Diane's jawline.

Final Selected Frame Before and After Retouching

Once we had a bunch of winning frames it was just a matter of choosing a favourite and touching it up. (In fact, I picked one, and Diane chose a couple of others she felt would be appropriate for different pages on her new site.) Retouching needed to be subtle because it would be particularly inappropriate for someone who works with animals, in rural/outdoor environments, and needs clients to trust her completely to appear at all unrealistic or inauthentic in her profile pictures.

So, all I did was:

- close her sexy top a bit. We couldn't get the fabric 'V' to sit straight during shooting so I digitally composited a fix in retouching,

- slenderize her body, and arms ever so slightly. Her torso area showing behind her arm may be cropped out of the final, anyway, but to give her the flexibility of using a less tight crop I just digitally 'repositioned' that area,

- brighten the light side of the face a bit more,

- remove some of the frizz around the edges of her hair. It's hard to do this just the right amount so that it doesn't look fake and 'cut out', but hair frizz and fly aways are distracting in photos and really show up in backlit situations, so I pretty much always advocate tidying up in retouching,

- subtly whiten her already white teeth, particularly in between the teeth where stains can form over time (visible in the high res file),

- subtly whiten eyes and remove visible blood vessels,

- subtly lighten/smoothen under eye areas,

- very subtly smoothen skin, particularly the slightly rough arm skin and neck wrinkles (visible in the high res file) and add subtle highlights onto arms. Importantly, make sure to leave texture in skin,

- emphasize/add to the sunlight 'flaring' in from outside, so the highlights in the hair and on the arm make visual sense.

That's about it! Diane's happy, so I'm happy. Now, onto the other frames she has requested. I can't wait to see how they fit into her new site design!

Back into the Workforce Business Portrait

Tracy "Before" and "After"

Ten years ago Tracy stepped away from her career in finance to dedicate herself to her growing family. Now that the demands on her time are changing with all three kids in school, she is rev'd about getting back into the workforce and relaunching her business self. 

When we're shooting in studio I always suggest clients bring some wardrobe choices, because often what we think looks good in life does not look as good in a photograph for various reasons. Tracy was a rock star in the wardrobe department bringing four jackets, nine tops(!) and a dress, all pressed and on hangers (perfect!). As, again, is often the case, she really wasn't sure what might work best for her portrait, and since she's been out of the business world for a while she had fewer specifically business oriented clothes to choose from than she used to. 

I wasn't sure the leather jacket was the way to go, so we tried three outfit variations, and ultimately decided that the leather jacket really did look most flattering. It also made Tracy feel most like herself. We did change the top underneath, though, to one with less distracting detail. That top was actually a dress which Tracy told me she almost didn't bring figuring she wouldn't need a dress for a portrait shoot. Thank goodness she did. It's good to remember that you can often "cheat" in photography; the same way something looks good in life but not on film, something might look great on film and not work at all in life. Regarding wardrobe, and jewellery, for that matter, if you're not sure, bring it anyway. Always better to have too much to choose from than nothing that really works!

Three wardrobe variations we thought might work, that didn't

While Tracy was focused on bringing wardrobe options to chose from, to her dismay she forgot her tinted moisturizer. She's a minimal make-up kind of person, and she has great skin so it wasn't a disaster, nothing a little retouching couldn't fix, and it was, truly, a little retouching. What else did we do? Tracy was wearing eyeliner but had applied it very subtly, so I just added to it (using her liner which she'd brought with her), to make it darker and thicker. At first she felt it looked a bit heavy, but looking at her photo she agreed it worked really well to emphasize and energize her eyes. The magic of eyeliner!

Tracy had also, the day before the shoot, visited her trusted hair salon Fiorio where stylist Chrissy (her usual stylist Phillipe being away) updated her look for her personal relaunch. Trying out a new stylist right before a photo shoot can be risky, but in this case it worked out really well! As always, there were a few hairs to style back into place once she was seated. Untamable flyaways were retouched out later.

Because I know Tracy and she had time, we played around with the lighting I had set up prior to her arrival just in case it looked better from the opposite side. It didn't, so back it went to the initial set-up. This meant, though, that we shot a bit more than we would usually need to, wrapping up after about 110 frames. 

With regard to the "before" photo at the beginning of this post, a comment: I had thought we were pretty much ready to go but realized something was missing...more accurately, it wasn't that something was missing, it was that there was too much light making the face look kind of flat and washed out. I prefer more modelling on the face (ie. light and shadow to create shape and depth) so I blocked the light reflecting into the right side of Tracy's face (left of photo), and voila.

A note regarding the background: in studio a common choice is between seamless paper (solid colour), or a painted backdrop (if not a more elaborate set). There are lots of very dated looking mottled backgrounds out there...we've all seen them...you know the look: kind of dark and speckled. Even some of those can still work if you light them well and throw them out of focus enough. I do like to have some kind of hint of texture in the backgrounds I use for corporate portraits, so when it's practical I use custom painted backdrops which I paint myself because I have not found many commercially produced textured backgrounds I like.

Finally here, an alternative shot captured just before we wrapped, featuring a slightly brighter expression and less formal and conservative look, with a light filter applied to further brighten and soften:

Now when Tracy's potential new employers see her LinkedIn profile, website, etc., she will have the added advantage of looking (in her profile picture) like the polished, professional, confident, friendly business woman she is.

To get to my website please click here: hollinrake.com.