In this video photographer Gavin Hoey and his show “Take and Make Great Photography” on AdoramaTV shows you how you can quickly improve your portraits by working with a makeup artist.
In a beauty portrait shoot Gavin makes use of good light, a talented model (Beth) and most importantly , for the topic of this video – a super talented makeup artist Sophie Daley.
Sophie would need to create two different looks – a quick makeup and a quality makeup.
Gavin Hoey uses classic beauty light set up, – a beauty dish with an eVolv 200 as the light source from above.
And to fill in a shadow below Beth’s chin Gavin uses – Californian Sun bounce.
For the background we would use gray seamless paper lit by another eVolv 200 light for a little vignetted area. The light setup will stay the same for both makeup looks.
MUA Sophie has done a great job and Beth now has a basic coverage makeup.
It’s a nice matte finish so it’s going to cut out flare and hot spots from these lights that should make the whole post-processing much quicker and simpler.
This makeup has a very clean simple look, a sort of level you can expect from a model who’s really good at doing their own makeup.
At first glance this all looks great but look a little closer, you’ll notice how Beth’s neck and shoulders are a different tone to her face.
Hands are often overlooked especially when you’re short of time and in this case Beth’s hands are clearly not the same tone as her face.
Now let’s give our MUA a bit more time and freedom to approach the model’s look more creatively.
While the model is being prepared for the second look, Gavin shares with us few tips of working with makeup artist.
1. Always provide a mood board. – You can’t just expect the makeup artist to read your mind. Web sites like Pinterest are really good to gather your ideas together and then share them with your makeup artist.
2. On the day of your shoot expect your makeup artist to need some space to work in so make sure you’ve planned and prepared for that.
3. Make sure MUA got great light at the MU station.
4. Be aware – you hire a makeup artist, not hair stylist. Now if you also need a hairstylist that could be somebody else. Not all makeup artists do hair and makeup. Sophie however she’s trained in hair as well.
5. Make sure you check with your makeup artist and explain what you need and that they can actually do it.
6. Great makeup takes time so expect that to be part of your day.
7. Finally makeup artists don’t work for free. Like everybody else they should be paid as part of your team.
Our model Beth now has a wet look hair and much more intense makeup. This should make for a very different set of pictures
using exactly the same lighting.
Gavin also reminds:
Now the makeup artist job doesn’t actually stop there. A really good makeup artist will be on set with you and they’ll keep an eye on the makeup any stray hairs and they can help you out enormously, so it’s always worth talking to makeup artist and explaining what you need.
Beth has got some makeup on her neck, her shoulders and even her hands so their color is a much closer match to her face.
If you zoom in on a picture, you can see the sharpness of the lip line, the detail around the eyes and just how smooth and even the skin tones are, all of those things really add up and save a ton of time in post-production.
Watch the full episode with Gavin Hoey and Adorama TV: