Fruit Theme Beauty Shoot

I saw some beauty shoot images by shot by Rankin and Phlearn.com based on fruits, vegetables and inserts earlier this year and thought I must try that.  For beauty shoots, makeup and model are absolutely vital.  For makeup, I turned to Jean Fernand, a makeup artist I’ve worked with many times before.  She was keen to do something on the theme.  Before the shoot, we sent each other images and agreed to shooting three looks using orange, lemon and strawberry.

I originally wanted to shoot five looks, but I am glad I took Jean’s advice and shot three.  The shoot took much longer than I thought.  For beauty shoots, the makeup and hair takes the most time, the picture take bit is the easy bit.  The lighting I used was simple and worked out beforehand.  I wanted a high key look with a pale skin blonde model.  This is where Tori come in, she is a model/dancer I’ve worked with a couple of times before.  While the images shown here are retouched, I did not do any skin smoothing at all.  What you see is the result of makeup and Tori's natural skin, I only removed some skin blemishes.

I think models need to be able to act if they are to succeed.  This is especially important with beauty models when you are only looking at the face of the model.  I am a firm believer a photo needs to tell a story and have a purpose.  It is the job of the photographer to do put it all together and the help of lighting, stylist, makeup and model.

The photographer is like a movie director and gives direction to the model.  When I started shooting, Tori was not sure what I wanted and I had to tell her where to look, how to pose and expressions I wanted.  Like most shoots, she quickly warmed up and I also fine tuned the look I wanted.  Once we got the look that worked it was much easier to get outstanding images rather than just good photos.

Really small difference in expression can make such big difference to the final image.  I had to shoot a lot of images to choose just a few of photos to edit.  There is no point in releasing the photos that you are not 100% happy with and quality always wins over quantity.  I am very happy with the images I got from this shoot and very happy with the work done by Jean and Tori.

Credits for all images:
Model: Tori Kingsbury
Hair and makeup: Jean Fernand