Today’s Post by Joe Farace
“I am Catwoman. Hear me roar.” — Michelle Pfeiffer, Batman Returns
One of my favorite glamour photography tips this time of year is to ask your portrait subjects to bring their Halloween costumes with them and wear it during a photo session.
As adults most of your portrait subjects and potential clients don’t usually get a chance to wear their costumes more than once and having them pose in character lets you create the kind of images that are both fun to shoot and fun for the subject too. And really that’s what cosplay is all about.
Here’s one interesting aspect of shooing Halloween portraits that I have found over the years: When your subjects are dressed in any kind of costume, they seems to get more personally involved in the session. In addition to getting a chance to create some great looking images that can be added to your portfolio, you also get to add another potential sale from the session. It’s a win-win situation for everyone.
How I made this photograph: Today’s portrait was made a few years ago during the very first shoot that I had with the famous Internet model Maria Cedar. When knowing that I’d be photographing Maria during October I suggested she wear a Catwoman-style costume because both Maria and Catwoman have larger-than-life personalities and this pose was one of her reinterpretations of that icon.
The lighting setup for this portrait was simple: A red Paul C. Buff DigiBee DB800 with a Plume Ltd hexagonal Wafer soft box attached was placed at camera left. A 40-inch Westcott 5-in-1 reflector was located at camera left. That’s it. She was photographed against my home studio walls that are now painted Sherwin Williams Lazy Grey—it’s similar to 18% grey—to minimize unwanted reflected light. The camera used was a Panasonic Lumix GH4 with Lumix G Vario 14-45mm f/3.5-5.6 lens (at 45mm) with an exposure of 1/125 sec at f/11 and ISO 200.
The RAW file was initially retouched in Photoshop using my standard retouching techniques using the Clone Stamp and Healing Brush. Then I applied the Dynamic Skin Softener plug-in that’s part of Color Efex Pro, reduced that layer to 20% opacity, but not much retouching was really required. My original concept for this image was that it would be am image that would be converted to black and white using Silver Efex but I prefer this color version, that has an touch of Color Efex Pro’s Glamour Glow filter.
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