Aleksandra Lech: a few words about beauty photography
The shoot with Aleksandra took place a month ago and was fairly spontaneous, like most of my shoots. While browsing maxmodels, I came across her profile and knew right away that "this was it." It's rare for me to find anyone interesting there, especially someone local. She's short, but she's only 14, so she still has plenty of time to grow. The plan was to take beauty photos, so her height didn't matter. Her face and figure did (and don't let anyone tell me that figure doesn't matter in beauty photography; you can ignore it only when the photo shows no more than a bit of neck below the face).
First, I'll explain what beauty photography actually is, since not everyone may know. I take a lot of these photos, so I'll mention them often. Beauty comes from glamour (showing the model in the most attractive, flattering way possible), but also from fashion: these photos often advertise jewelry, glasses, and so on. They also promote makeup and hair products, or simply show the face clearly enough to see the makeup and hairstyle in detail (which is why many such photos advertise brands like Dior). Beauty photos always show the face up close (sometimes just the face in a tight close-up, sometimes a wider frame that even includes the bust, but they aren't fashion photos; in beauty, the face is the center of attention). People still confuse beauty photography with portraiture, even though the two have nothing in common apart from similar framing. A portrait shows people as they are, while beauty shows them as we want them to look at that particular moment. A completely different hairstyle and makeup more suited to a carnival party than a trip to the movies are perfectly normal in beauty photography, but unacceptable in a portrait.
With Aleksandra, I wasn't doing typical beauty à la glamour. Instead, I tried to show her in a way similar to Beata Maj in the shoot you may have read about in my post about beauty dishes. We leaned more toward the fashion side of beauty, and since Ola could pose exactly the way I like most (she knows how to look furious in photos), I tried to make the most of it (I rarely find a girl who can do that; so far, I've met only a few). In the end, I still chose the gentler shots because they suited the styling better, but anyone who wants the really furious ones should feel free to invite Ola to a shoot.
Beauty: styling 1
First up was a shot with her hair combed smooth and ending above her eyebrows. Karolina Zientek, who did the models' makeup for most of my shoots, was responsible for both the hair and makeup. The test photos showed that the bangs needed to be arranged a little differently for the half-profile shot. While Karolina was fixing them, they fell over the eye and partly covered it, making it clear that this was exactly how the hair should stay. In the first shot, unlike the others, the bangs were quite messy:
135 mm | F/5.0, 1/200s, ISO 200
For the second shot, the lighting didn't change. Only the hairstyle and the direction the model was facing were different:
135 mm | F/14, 1/200s, ISO 400
I set the aperture so that both the hair and the eye were within the depth of field. And here's the last photo with the same styling and lighting:
135 mm | F/14, 1/200s, ISO 400
The light in this photo falls as though the light were lower than it was in the previous shots. That's because her head is tilted upward. If the light had been low with her head in this position, the shadows could have pointed upward instead of down, giving me a character from a horror movie rather than a beauty photo.
Beauty: styling 2
There was no point in taking more photos with the same styling, so it was time for the next one. Karolina had wanted to use a white fascinator in beauty photos for a long time, but it had never fit my vision. This time, we finally had a chance to use it:
135 mm | F/7.1, 1/200s, ISO 200
As you can see, the setup in this photo is quite different from the previous one. The 70 cm beauty dish with a grid was still the main light, but I added two rim lights behind umbrellas and a light filling the shadows from below (also behind an umbrella). I also changed the background to a lighter color by simply replacing the black reflector with a white one. I didn't change the color with the light itself because the model was too close to the background (we were shooting in a small room) and the light would have reflected onto her. I opened up the aperture so the mesh would blur slightly instead of drawing all the attention. The setup is below:
Summary
We shot the kind of beauty photography I like most (see styling 1), so it would have been hard for me to be unhappy. Mateusz "Pro" Prociak assisted, and everything went fairly smoothly. I had done several earlier shoots without any assistance, which meant a fair amount of running back and forth between the light and the camera every few moments. This time, I managed to avoid that.
PS. You can find more about the makeup and preparing the model here.