Brenton Parry

Before and After

Added 2020-06-17 04:04:28 +0000 UTC

Before and After is where I show you, my "All Out" readers where an image starts and where it ends up. This model had been booked for a month or so and a few days before the shoot he warned me that he'd had a breakout on his skin but we persevered and did a shoot anyway. That shoot will be featured in the future on this page.

The first stage of working with these images was to clear up his skin. There are a couple of different techniques in photoshop that can be utilised to achieve a natural skin texture but without the blemishes and discolouration. It's very easy to go a bit wild in clearing up skin and I tend to avoid giving my models a "Hollywood" retouch, using the philosophy "if it's always there, leave it, if it's going to go away, get rid of it." That means if it's a scar or a mole, typically I leave it. A scratch or a pimple, they get retouched out.

Once that was complete I had to decide on a colour grade. My intention was to always have a bit of a moody vibe to this series but the warmer, pink tones to the grey backdrop and skin tone weren't working at all for me. My goal was to achieve an more ominous, cinematic colour grade so I made the skin tone more yellow than pink and then took the shadows to the much cooler end of the colour spectrum and into the realms of dark greens. Ultimately I was really happy with how this shoot turned out.