Today’s Post by Blue Moon Staff’
“Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.” ―
One of the first questions we often hear from new models is, “I would really like to have a sexy glamour portraits made of me r but I’m shy about being photographed wearing little or nothing.”
This model wanted her glamour portraiture session to be different from others that we had done for her in the past. I suggested that we use a fine art approach to her portrait using an idea that’s been in my head for a long time: Wrapping the person in wet cheesecloth.
Make-up Tip
There are make-up suggestions for portraits all over the Internet but in this case I asked the model to wear dark lipstick. “Is dark brown OK,” she asked. As you can tell, it sure was. The big secret, if there is any, is that makeup for an intimate portraiture session should be darker and heavier than what you would normally wear on the street; the best makeup is dramatic. It makes for more dramatic portraits too, as you can see.
How I Made this Portrait:
One of the very best models that I ever found through a modeling website was Pamela. She is beautiful, versatile and open to creative suggestions, so when I asked if I could wrap her up in wet cheesecloth (from Home Depot) and photograph her, she was enthusiastic about it. Not only that, Pam created such amazing poses that of the 81 images we made together of her wrapped up in soggy cheesecloth there are no—count’em—bad photographs. Every time I look at these images I find one more that I like even better.
I shot this series of image with my standard Paul C Buff studio monolights but for whatever reason I accidentally underexposed the images somewhat and when shot with the Micro Four-thirds Panasonic Lumix GH4 and Lumix G Vario 14-45mm f/3.5-5.6 (at 40mm) lens her skin color went pinky magenta. I used a technique for correcting underexposed color to fix the exposure problem and try as hard as I might, I could never get her skin tones correct so I did what I do under these kinds of conditions: I converted the image to Black and White using Silver Efex. I think the image’s drama is heightened with a monochrome look. I hope you agree..
