Melanie De Wit in Red: Videos from My Latest Photoshoot

I had taken a long break from photography. My last shoot was a year earlier, and my last one in Bangkok was even longer ago, at the very beginning of 2014. This city really makes you lazy... The break caused a few problems. Ten minutes before the shoot, for example, it turned out that the black reflector I use as a background for beauty photos was too creased to use. Instead, I used a gray background and darkened it during editing. I also insisted on testing my new toys, YongNuo YN-560 IV speedlights. They are incredibly cheap, especially in Asia, and surprisingly good. I used them as rim lights but without softboxes, which gave me a little more work to do on the hair. There is no point writing much about it, though. I recorded the whole shoot as a time-lapse, and because I created extra work for myself with the hair and background, I decided to make videos showing the editing as well. You will find them in the bonus section.

I photographed Melanie De Wit, a model I met just after moving to Bangkok. I did a shoot with her then and said I would do another one. Almost two years later, it finally happened :). I knew I wanted a beauty photo because there was not enough space for fashion. I had red makeup in mind and that was essentially all I told the makeup artist, Damian Black: red eyes and lips. The rest was up to him.

Photos

Nikon D700 | Nikkor 135mm 2D DC | F/8 | 1/200 s | ISO 200

There was enough room for wider frames too, so we made one more photo in the end. We had not planned it, so the model did not bring an outfit and we needed to put something red on her. We chose a T-shirt and wrapped it around her body, but unfortunately it did not sit well. We needed something much longer. We did make the second photograph, but the outfit required major changes during editing.

Nikon D700 | Nikkor 135mm 2D DC | F/8 | 1/200 s | ISO 200

The shirt did not work at all in the next photo, so I eventually abandoned it.

Backstage video: the entire shoot in a four-minute film

Apart from the video itself, it also includes my commentary on the equipment used for this shoot.

https://youtu.be/6cK8xdAX79s Links mentioned in the video: - Beauty dish: the magic of hard light - Jinbei DPsIII: first impressions - Jinbei DPsIII vs. MSN II - My first PLN 1,000 lighting kit

Summary

After such a long break, I was badly out of practice. It could have been done better, for example by using very narrow softboxes with grids as rim lights. I had both those softboxes and the adapters they needed, so I would not have had to use studio lights instead of speedlights. A black reflector or another black material would have worked better as the background, with its center lit. That would have required another light, but I have far too many of them. The final result after editing would have looked identical, but I would have achieved it with much less time spent retouching.

I bought the YongNuo lights solely for outdoor shoots, but I will probably do those in winter, when the temperature drops to... about 30 degrees above zero :).

The equipment I used for the shoot was supplied by Fripers.pl.