KITCHENS ARE A COOL PLACE FOR EXTRA-CURRICULAR ACTIVITIES [SET 1 of 2]

You may remember 'The Kitchen Files', a crazy set of images shot with Aurora at my home in Australia some time ago. Well, my fascination with kitchens continues and this one in Madeira had exceptional light through a small frosted glass window high up on camera right.

We started off with the usual portraits and ended with some in your face shots. It's never planned - but when there's none of the usual model levels standing in the way then a certain uninterrupted flow can happen, and Aurora's movement isn't hindered in any way.

Tech: Z6, 50mm f1.8 shot either at f1.8 or f2, ISO 400.

EDIT

Edited in Camera Raw using a film preset which was part of a set from VSCO that I purchased a long time ago. You can't get these presents anymore but they were the most realistic film presets I've seen - and I've seen and tried many! Out of that pack I only ever use a couple these days and they form the basis of my editing of digital images. This preset is Ektar 100 - I modified it to suit my own tastes of course but the essential colour grading and overall look and feel suits my aesthetic. I don't like Ektar 100 film by the way 😜 but the preset is great.

RETOUCHING

These images were retouched using a quick and nasty method which I don't often use but due to time constraints I got slack. I normally use a frequency separation methods which I learned from an expert retoucher. The method is one of the basic methods that most retouching houses use and while it can be time intensive, the results are natural and incomparable. If you need to make models happy (and who doesn't in order to be able to get the images that YOU want - there's always a trade-off) then this is the way to go. Not just for the usual skin smoothing, but blemishes, bruises, pimples and other non permanent things - you need to get rid of those as it's not fair on your subject otherwise. I see it as a prime responsibility if you're gonna shoot any model who charges other people for their modelling - even if you're shooting them for trade.

Of course up to you, I do regularly shoot and don't do any skin work at all but that is always discussed with the subject beforehand. One example was Saskia in Australia who actually requested for one shoot only, that I do no retouching and I'm honoured she chose me to shoot her that way. She had always struggled with acne but she was sick of always having her skin retouched. She thought fuck it, if people are gonna have issues with seeing me as I really am then they can f*%k off.