I’ll get to the point, this post won’t an overly long drawn out storyboard of the photoshoot. I’m not going to dive into details and I’m not going to share much through words. This post will contain fragmented sentences.

What this post will entail is how I got the shot… One of these images received the most response I’ve ever had on any image and I figured this would be the perfect time to show everyone just how the shot came to be. This is a post for photographers or aspiring photographers.

I had never worked with Erin O'Lash or Alidia Roorda, so I was excited. Our MUA for the day, Isidro Valencia was going to play with a palette of insane color blast and I had the full intention of stepping out of the box. We setup two seamless backdrops, one with a turquoise color and the other white. My first set was with Alidia on the turquoise backdrop. I had used the turquoise for a shoot last month with Leah Cultice, so I changed the entire fabric of the image but simply placing a splash of red on it.

After we wrapped the very beautiful Alidia Roorda, we moved onto Erin O'Lash. As soon as she stepped in front of the camera, I was floored. Her expressions and movements were spot on. I had no trouble capturing the shots I did. First, we setup in front of a frosted glass sliding door, I wanted a high key, angelic look. Within the first few shots, I had the shot nailed, but something was missing. I needed an extra catchlight, so I grabbed the disassembled the silver beauty dish and held it up right under Erin’s chest, I took the shot. The blue eye shadow and metal headband popped off the white flare and the beauty dishes gave the parallel catchlights I needed.

The last set required some work, work meaning waiting. I wanted to try and shoot with only ambient light, but a hard ambient light. So, we waited for the sun. It had to be in the perfect spot and had to but just right. The clouds were heavy that day, but once we got our window of time we took it and I fired away, scoring the shot below. The intense shadows on Erin’s face were caused by the hard lines on the door frame.

I have decided to share my “straight out of camera” shot and my edited shot to show you what I did in post…

Cropped in the image, removed any and all blemishes with the patch tool and healing brush. Used the clone tool to to remove and stray hairs or distracting background noise. Re-touched the skin, using a combination of median and high pass filtering. Brought out the eyes using the curve tool and layer masking. Brought out the highlights using the curve tool and de-saturated the entire image by 10%. Threw a film burn screen on the image and gave it some motion blur. Lastly, I added on a small violet color fill. I ended up with nearly 12 layers on this image.

Looking back, this shoot was a complete experimentation for me. I definitely made some mistakes, but learned from them. Despite the failures, I came out with some compelling images and in my opinion one of the better beauty shots I’ve ever captured.

Without some amazing photograhers I know sharing their knowledge I wouldn’t be where I am. If you have any questions regarding my lighting or post processing, feel free to comment below or shoot me an email: info@claycookphotography.com