Behind the Camera

A small selection of photos from a studio shoot this week of beauty photography.

A

Photographed using a Woodman 5x4" field camera fitted with a digital adaptor back.

To give texture and sculpting the face the fill light was a large beauty dish above the camera with a small strip light below. Large strip lights were used to highlight bone structure.

Model: Esther    Hair & Make Up: Sarah Heap using Mac products

All photographs are available as Giclee prints either from the studio or through The World Photography Organisation

Lee on Solent UK on a cold November afternoon looking across to the Isle of Wight.

Image is available as a signed giclee high gloss print in sizes A4, A3, A2 and A1.

To contact for more information, prices and galleries please email studio@robertwilkinson.co.uk

Langstone Harbour is a large tidal bay lying between Hayling Island and Portsmouth. A narrow entrance protects the harbour from the open sea and small channels link Langstone with Portsmouth Harbour to the west and Chichester Harbour to the east. At high tide, water covers about 1900 hectares but at low tide only about 200 hectares are under water, leaving 1700 hectares of mud exposed. Saltmarsh and cordgrass cover the more sheltered areas of shore and islands within the harbour are used by nesting seabirds. The harbour is much used for recreation, both on and off the water and there are a number of mooring areas providing both deep water and drying moorings for several hundred boats. There is a small fleet of commercial fishing vessels and commercial ships land goods at two wharves.

At the time of the last ice age, the area would have been a wooded valley with streams running along the course of today's channels into the river Solent and there is evidence that stone age man lived and hunted in the valley. As the icecaps melted and sea levels rose at the end of the ice age, the sea gradually flooded the area until something like the present shape of the harbour was reached around 5000 years ago. Since then, man has been the main force in shaping the harbour, reclaiming land for agriculture, development and waste disposal, particularly along the north and west shores. As sea levels continue to rise, the hard sea walls created prevent the natural process of the mudflats and saltmarshes moving inland. These habitats are trapped between the higher sea level and the walls, a process known as coastal squeeze - one of the biggest threats to the special habitats of the Harbour and all along the coast of southern England.

This was photographed along the old route of the Hayling Billy railway line.

Fine art giclee prints are available of this image. Please contact for more details. studio@robertwilkinson.co.uk

A classic beauty shoot photographed in my studio with a modern twist on the old tintype photographic process.

The Tintype (or ferrotype) process dates back to the US in the 1850's ... a lot of the Civil War photographs were tintypes. For this shoot it is a modern digital take on the process. I find it useful to try out new ideas and incorporate a modern twist on some of the old processes. It pays to keep pushing the boundaries and giving the clients something a little extra and different from the competition.

The idea was for the brilliant Somojo magazine which is dedicated to the Creative Arts.

I used a 5ft vertical striplight to the left and behind the model with a grid, a 28" beauty dish with a grid above the camera and small horizontal striplight below the camera to give a catchlight at the bottom of the eyes + a black reflector to the right. The striplight was set about a stop and a half higher than the beauty dish.

The images were shot digitally on a Nikon D3x with a Nikkor f2.8 70-200 lens. They were retouched in Photoshop CS5 firstly removing any blemishes then a little skin smoothing plus some contouring.

The digital tintype effect was created by converting the image to black and white and using a small amount of red filter to lighten the skintones. On another adjustment layer the contrast was tweaked to give richer blacks. The image was masked and painted to give a darker edged vignette. Then on another curves adjustment layer the red and blue channels were adjusted with the push towards red and yellow. Finally a layer of noise was added with a little Gaussian  blur for good measure, this gave a slight film grain texture to the final images.

The model was Taylor from LMP

Hair & Make up by Sarah Heap ... using Mac, Nars and Stila cosmetics.

Some additional reading on the tintype process http://www.rleggat.com/photohistory/history/tintype.htm

http://tintype.co.uk/

For more information about lighting, how to create digital style tintype photographs or to book Rob for a beauty shoot in his London studio or on location please email the studio at studio@robertwilkinson.co.uk

A very enjoyable editorial beauty shoot, the idea was to be based around an 'Ice Queen' theme originally for Somojo Magazine. Keeping the colours cool and muted for the final selection of photographs.

Usually I like to keep my lighting as simple as possible but on this occasion I seemed to use quite a few lights ... a beauty dish as the key light, two five foot strip lights to light slightly from behind giving a light edge to the skin, two slightly smaller and thinner strips for the face and then a couple of heads with gels shot through a scrim background. All were studio flash heads (Originally when the brief came in I toyed with the idea of mixing flash and tungsten heads to get the effect I wanted but in the end we went with gelled studio flash heads).

The model is Julie Burville who is always a great pleasure to work with. Very creative and professional and good fun to have around.

Make up by Sarah Heap using Mac & Nars products.

Hair was by Lauren Cooper from Verelle.