How do you achieve this affect?

[hipsanndhearts]

Is it photoshop, or the flash or a combination of both?
I'm referring to the crispness & bright colors in the photos, especially the eyes. Whats the trick?!

 

[Alpha]

These are shot with a professional strobe lighting setup. You can see the reflection of the softbox in their eyes.

As for the color, could simply be professional film, or good digital post-processing.

 

[Garbz]

Yep you can read the lighting setup from their eyes. Softbox on the left, and on the top a very faint reflector on the right to bounce some fill light back.

The big softbox makes a softer light with less defined shadows which smoothens skin too. A necessity for most ordinary portraiture.

 

[usayit]

Just FYI....

Photos that are not yours should be posted as url links.

 

[Sw1tchFX]

These also have background lights too, used for seperation in the shadow areas of the portraits so they dont' look like they fade into the background.

You can almost always tell the lightign scheme just by analizing the reflections in the eyes.

same goes for digital. Digital doesn't replace good, correct lighting. If shot digitally, the photographer most likely did an unsharp mask on the eyes to give them a little more pop.