Trying my hand at a boudoir photography, what do you think? 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. Comments more than welcome!
Those are beautiful. I would put a NSFW warning on the title, even though it says budoir...I would maybe photoshop out some of the inperfections on the face, make her a little more doll-like (but not in a fake way). In number two she looks awefully sad, and the teddy bear kind of takes away from the sexiness of it. You can also really see her nipple... But those are my only critiques. Your lighting and composition, IMO, are great! I would have to say no.5 is my fave. I love the DOF and her expression.
When I shot them regularly, we had soft focus filters (netting filters) on the lenses. This was a normal thing. Consider soft, gaussian blurs and don't forget to un-blur the eyes. But... every rule had an exception. We shot a client that was sending all the proofs to Playboy and we had to take all the filters off. They wanted to see the "skin" deficiencies. Your clients probably do not.
Just about 2 minutes in Photoshop... I did "auto levels" (ctrl+shift+L) Added a small amount of saturation. Added a small amount of yellow & then red. I brightened her eyes. (dodging tool on the white part of her eye.) And then darkened her shoulder & back slightly. I smoothed out under eyes, and her forehead. (using the cloning tool) And then... with a large feather setting, selected her face and brightened it a bit. You can do a lot in two minutes! One thing that I would be careful of, is when she is laying against anything that her face isn't being squished or distorted. (Like in image #2)
The shots aren't bad,but your model looks so unhappy. Sort of like my wife anytime the camera comes out.
Sorry guys and gals, been so busy lately that I haven't had time to respond. I understand about her look, she wasn't sad though - a bit tired maybe and lying down on the bed made her relax a bit too much so she wanted to go to sleep double espresso before the next shoot methinks! And the imperfections of her skin are what she wanted, she doesn't like the overly processed soft 80s / 90s look that quite often happens, however I think I can make more use of lower light levels and wider aperture as I did in a couple of them. It was good practise for me, and I am wiser now, thanks for your comments!
I feel like you missed the boat on this one. The point of boudoir portaiture is to convey alluring (usually sexy) beauty. You have a fairly decent setting and a good model, but the lighting isn't doing anything to show this. It's mostly the direction of the main light... the ratio too. A larger, softer, more directional lighting scheme would have made this session more successful. I hope this is helpful. -Pete
Cheers Pete, I have two softboxes at the mo, but I do need to sort out some more drectional lighting - barn doors, snoot etc. Still getting to grips with lighting - slowly but surely
These seem very yellow. I think expression is pretty important in these type of shots and the only one that looks close is in #4. She just looks plain tired in the rest of them.
I really don't care for all that colored material around her or the bear. Some of them do look pretty yellow and her expression isn't very happy.
Let me start out by saying that boudoir is tough to shoot and you've made a good start. For the future it would be good if you were mindful of a few things. Be careful of shadows, having her shoulder obscuring her face (shoulder meeting the chin is usually ok), blank or bored facial expressions and body folds & bulges. Some of your angles are good but need some tweaking. With women that have a little bit of meat on their bones (not bony) you should be shooting them from above with their chin up and their faces towards you. If you have her stretch her shoulders down a bit and elongate her torso, this will help to make her appear slimmer and smooth out 'wrinkles' of skin. Keep up the good work and make sure to post your next effort.
I think you read my mind as I was looking at the pics. They look very flat and boring. She just looks bored and just there.
