Under the Cover #1: January 2018

Since space and time was tight, we brought in a half-size roll of Savage™ seamless photo paperto sit Erica for the cover shot. All we needed was the face — if we wanted to do a half- or full-body shot, we’d have needed a much larger, full-size roll, and for that, we’d need a truck becasue that thing would be too long to stick in a car.

Our MultiZine is all about transparency and looking at the Girl as She is constructed for the purposes of capital, marketing, and social control. Part of this process includes a look at how we also construct the images that we use as content for our own purposes. That being said, we wanted to give our readers a peek “under the hood’ of fashion and Girl production.

Of course, most people are cognizant of the fact that some element of production goes into making images in the fashion world. One hears all about Photoshop, retouching, and other post-production techniques that go into making beautiful images/images of beauty. But for as much criticism has been aimed in the direction of post-production, far less attention is paid to pre-production and the production process itself, which is actually where the fun — and the fiction — starts.

Blowout. Too bright. f5.6.

A tad too “low key” (dark) @ f 9.0.

So, since the wonders of digital make it easy to get proper exposure levels on subjects fast, by eyeballing the pics in real time, it’s easy to set up my portable rig (a Godox studio strobe that has a big, fat battery on it to allow use anywhere).

Now, $600 buys you what used to be $2400 or so from ProFoto. Thanks, China!

Armed with a folding beauty dish from Interfit ($65), I’m damn near lethal. And mobile.

Same f9 but with the model in the middle, she’s a tad closer to the camera. This exposure is technically correct.

By the stage after the pink paper, i had strted shooting Erica a bit more ‘high key” because you get more pop that way as long as you have perfect makeup coverage. And it takes out a bit of detail and evens the skin even more when you push the face to almost blowout. That high key look has been popular in East Asia for decades.

OK. It’s time to have some camera talk. I like doing this, because the more the fashion process is demystified, the more we are liberated. Like they say, “The More You Know™…”

As I’ve mentioned in other places, much ado has been made of the powers of Photoshop. And for good reason. There is hardly a single image of the thousands we see every day that isn’t passed through hundreds of Photoshop work hours. But with the critique of fashion images, we only tell half the story of how constructed and laboured these images are. Like in taking the picture above — let’s talk about lights.

There’s a long list of desirable conditions for a good fashion headshot:

1. A circular key (main) light. That’s usually either a large, circular reflector generally referred to as a “beauty dish” or a ring flash for close-up work.
2. Light-absorbent background paper in a cool-ass color. Having even, wide swaths of color that doesn’t reflect light back as nasty points of blowout is key. That half-roll of pink Savage Seamless™ is about $50 A ROLL.
3. Total control of the aperture and shutter. Aperture (measured in f-stops) controls strobe brightness, yet shutter speed controls ambient light.
4. Flawless, even makeup coverage.This is why stage makeup looks so garish in person. Bare skin and makeup-covered skin photograph totally differently. Even when your favorite actress comes out looking bare-faced-yet-flawless, she’s probably making makeup done to look like there’s no makeup. Makeup MAKES these pictures. Photoshop perfects them.
5. Not a hair out of place.
6. The lighting, people. The LIGHTING. And one thing — don’t have flawed skin under the harsher light of a beauty dish. Just…don’t. You do professional cover with makeup or… it’s just gonna look terrible. And if you don’t want the portrait to look like it came from Olan Mills™, then you have to go with the beauty dish. And you pay for makeup and hair.

What we don’t want.

What we want, lighting-wise.

Now, this is where post-processing in Photoshop helps. First-off, Erica has a tiny little scar on her arm Ididn’t notice in the shoot. With the Heal tool, zap — gone. Also, under the arm, a bit of blue-ish stubble. models are human. Yet, i didn’t want to do a lot of skin work in PS. But no trouble. I just recropped closer since the key element of the arms framing the face is defined partially by the hands, the closer crop didn’t hurt things at all. The arms, hands, and beautiful mane of hair still frame things wonderfully. The only thing I am not going to do — mostly because I can’t do it well — is deal with extensive skin retouching. If this were actually Vogue, Erica’s face would have been extensively retouched — what the Korean Snow app does as a filter. The problem is that hardcore retouching done poorly/mechanically is what gives most fashion/ad pics that fake feel. Done right, it looks amazing. Pick up the nearest copy of a sports fitness magazine if you want to see skin retouched well, or even a music video, because they do those, too. It’s largely makeup (yes, even on butts) to begin with, then smart lighting.

Ain’t nobody that perfect.

I don’t shoot fitness much, but last fitness model I shot, he had fasted for 48 hours and hadn’t ingested fluids for 12, and did a bunch of flash pushups and burpees right before each round of shooting, and that’s all aside from the oil he covered himself with. So, if you want to look like a fitness model, now you know what to do, even before the professional lighting and Photoshop work.

“My anaconda don’t want none unless you got pro lighting and cover makeup, hon!”

And the fional product, as a reminder.

As close to my goal as I am capable at this point in time.