It has happened to all of us. Things go sideways and we are not sure we will recover from it. I recently had a session where it felt like everything was going wrong. An hour before our scheduled start time, I find out that the hair stylist is not coming. WHAT!?!?! Oh no, minor panic attack. What am I going to do? Of course, I call my client, Shelley, and explain what has happened. Makeup is still a go, but the stylist I hired cannot come. We have two choices: reschedule; or, I can do your hair! I've been in this business a while, so I have picked a few things up. I have learned a lot about hair and makeup, but this is the first time I will be doing someone else's hair for them. It actually ended up being pretty awesome. We had some extra bonding time laughing about my non-pro hair stylist comments like "Am I brushing too hard?", and the constant "Sorry -um, sorry!". Turns out that I'm not too shabby at hair styling. Don't get me wrong, I will still hire a pro everytime, but it is nice to know that all was not lost that day...
We reviewed Shelley's wardrobe choices when we realized something else had gone terribly wrong. She forgot all of her necklaces at home! She had brought some lovely dresses to wear. Although not critical, a necklace can make a big difference to an evening gown. Here's where having a home studio comes in handy. I have all kinds of necklaces in my personal wardrobe, so I just fetched them and we started to try them out to see what would go best with her gowns. It was pretty fun, actually. It reminded me of fun times with my best friend. We always borrowed from each other!
So, in the end, everything that went wrong just brought me closer to my client. And the photographs I captured that day are some of my favourites. Not just because Shelley looks stunning, but because it reminds me of how much fun we had.
Shelley
One thing that went right that day is that I was lucky enough to try out some new actions in Photoshop! I am always trying to find new ways to cut down editing time, so when Sleeklens.com asked me to try their portrait retouching actions, I thought why not! I am super familiar with Photoshop and didn't think I really needed help in this area, but if it's possible to save time, I am game! So, I decided to try my new actions out on these images of Shelley. I used their Portrait Perfection Collection. I mostly used the "Fast Retouch" for the eyes, skin and teeth, and found it to be super handy. One thing that can be annoying with actions is the lack of control. I was pleasantly surprised that I had amazing control over the amount of skin smoothing, teeth-whitening, etc. And it was fast! The "Dodge & Burn" from "From a Candy Store" was also really useful. This set comes with so many more actions to help with colour temperature, colour balance, tone enhancement, web-resizing and advanced portrait retouching as well. I can see myself making some of these actions part of my regular workflow for sure. In the meantime, I will have fun playing with them!
shoot.print.love.laurie
PS - have you heard about 30 Days of Gorgeous? It's coming, and you can be a part of it!
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