It’s “Tricky Tuesday,” a way for me to share some of the tricks, tips and techniques that I’ve used over the years when shooting portraits in the studio, Today’s post features the amazing Pam Simpson. She and I have a shoot scheduled for next month, marking our 14th year of working together.
Today’s Post by Joe Farace
Lingerie is my next love after clothing; I think it is what is worn underneath that really inspires a woman to feel beautiful in her clothes, that inner, secret glamour.–Alice Temperley
The data I get from this blog’s software tell about the popularity of individual posts and recently showed that the most popular series of posts I ever created was the “See Through Clothing” series that began in February, 2023. It contained the first, second, and third most popular posts that were all from that same series. The first post in the see through series featured Madison and was the most popular and when I posted the featured image of her on Instagram, it got me shadow banned! I did a deeper drive into that statistics and it tuned out that the fourth and fifth most popular posts were also from the see through series. Sixth place was about my Oreo lens that ultimately contributed to the name of Barry Staver and my podcast series–Pixels, Grain and Cookies. There are links from several of the most popular posts in the Related section at the bottom of this post.
See Through Lingerie
Lingerie is a category of women’s clothing that includes undergarments, sleepwear and lightweight robes. The word implies that the garments are alluring and fashionable. Lingerie can be made of lightweight, stretchy, smooth, sheer or decorative fabrics such as silk, satin, Lycra, charmeuse, chiffon, or lace.–excerpt from Wikipedia
Some of the models who are featured in the original See Through series, which included other kinds of garments, not just lingerie, had either never appeared or may be under represented on this blog for several reasons, including the number of shoots I had with them. Others, like Pam Simpson have appeared here many, many times, as recently as last week. In her last appearance in the see though series she was photographed in my home studio. Question: Should I re-start this series with all-new images? Let me know what you think.
Glamour photography is often created in studio as with today’s featured photograph, if only for privacy reasons. But that is not a hard-and-fast rule. You can shoot glamour or intimate portraiture on-location–even outdoors as environmental portraiture.
How I made this portrait: In the past I liked displaying finished glamour images on-line in black and white to produce what I convinced myself was a quietly, pensive look.You can see what the featured portrait looks like in monochrome in the upper right. More recently I prefer making and displaying these kinds of images in color because I think color adds a more natural and contemporary look to the portrait. But it all comes down to taste, something I talk about in last Friday’s post Shooting Available Light Portraits with Film.
In this portrait, the luminescent Pam Simpson demonstrate why she is such an amazingly versatile model. For this glamour session with her, the lighting setup used a Godox QT600IIM monolight with a Westcott Apollo Strip soft box attached that was placed at camera right. The soft box’s flexible framework uses an umbrella-style construction so it’s compatible with many different kinds of lighting hardware. Some side light was provided by another Godox monolight located at camera left with its standard metal reflector in place. Backdrop was a two-sided Savage Monsoon (this is the darker side) collapsible background that was supported by a dedicated background light stand.
The camera used was a Panasonic Lumix GH4 with Leica DG Macro-Elmarit 45mm f/2.8 lens with an exposure of 1/125 sec and f/8 and ISO 200. The original JPEG file was retouched using my standard Photoshop techniques before being lightly enhanced with Vivenza.
My book Joe Farace’s Glamour Photography is full of tips, tools and techniques for glamour and boudoir photography and includes information on all of the cameras used as well as the complete exposure data for each image. Used copies start around twenty-five bucks.as I write this. The Kindle version is $19.99 for those preferring a digital forma