Most hotels go through a bedroom refurbishment programme. How often they do this depends on how busy they are and how much abuse the rooms get every day. Eventually that marked wallpaper needs replacing, the worn carpets need throwing out and the paintwork on the windows needs a going over.

This gives us an ideal opportunity to photograph them looking their best for the hotel brochure, and this is what we’ve done for Matfen Hall. The newly refurbished ‘room 12′ goes live on the system on Monday morning, so over the weekend we headed up there to grab a shot.

The room is on the corner of the building and has two large windows, one facing east and the other facing north. This is a good start – if the window was facing south and it was a bright, sunny day then we would have all sorts of problems with harsh, direct sunlight, especially at this time of year. As it turns out it was overcast and quite dull. This gives us a lovely quality of light, just not much of it!

The way to overcome this lack of light is to introduce our own and control it, but ideally blend it with the existing ambient light. This is a shot of the room with no additional lighting and exposed for the tungsten lamps.

This is the exposure I need if I want to make sure that these lights are visible in the final image. If I use too much additional light from my studio flash heads then it will kill this ambient light completely, and this isn’t what I want. It will actually look as though the bedroom lights are turned off.

The first step is to set up the main light. I put this in the same place that the majority of the natural light comes from, and that’s the large window to the right of the image. This light has a huge shoot through umbrella on it, the aim being to use a large light source to replicate windowlight, and to work alongside the windowlight that already exists. The result is the image below:

Note how the ambient light and this main light are balanced, you can still see the light emitted from the tungsten bulbs in the room. This isn’t a bad start, but there are a couple more things we need to take care of. The shadows to the bottom left of the image need filling as it’s a little dark in there. The small amount of light that is there comes from a smaller window positioned to the bottom left of the image. Another studio flash head was placed here, but this time we used a lower power setting and an umbrellabox. This allows us more directional control, and means that we can direct light quite accurately just to the area we want to fill. If we used a shoot through umbrella then this light would scatter everywhere. Here’s what we get:

A subtle difference, but necessary. So, that’s the main light and the fill light set up – we’re just about there. There’s just one more thing that needs looking at, and that’s the lighting in the bathroom through the door at the back. It’s a bit too dark in there at the moment and because of this the image is a little flat. We set up a small hostshoe flash on a lighting stand with a radio remote, and fired it on half power through another shoot through umbrella.

Again, it’s a subtle difference, but it’s these incremental steps that makes an image better. Now that we have all of the power ratios set and the lights in the right place we can get to work. We shot a series of images, bracketting exposures and slightly changing angles. We then processed the final RAW files in Adobes outstanding ‘Lightroom’ and using the ‘curves’ and ‘vibrance’ controls gave the image a little more punch.

And so we have it! It’s another example of how you can’t rely on the ambient light to get the image you want. It’s often not enough to just work with what’s available, sometimes you need to add your own light, but always in a natural, sympathetic way.

We were recently asked up to Matfen Hall to get some shots of a couple of their leisure club members.

These guys are no ordinary members though, it’s Ian Whalton and Cliff Thornton, who as well as being members of the Matfen Hall team are also members of the Great Britain Triathlon team.

As these guys are so active (and quick) it made sense to get a shot of them actually doing what they do. So, early one morning (when all top athletes tend to prefer being out training rather than in bed) we met up and planned the shot.

The idea was a sensible one, and nothing could go wrong. We find a quiet country road, strap me in the back of a van, open the back doors and get the guys to run & cycle behind me while I photograph them. If we keep the distance between the camera and the guys constant then we can get away with a fairly low shutter speed, certainly low enough to blur the motion of the road passing beneath us and apply a very small amount of movement to the athletes. A wide angle lens of a 20mm focal length was used to give a dramatic effect, and because of this the athletes had to run just a few feet behind the van or they would just be specks in the distance due of the perspective of a lens like this.

We did a couple of runs back and forward, and picked our spots to shoot carefully. We shot when there was a break in the tree line on the right of the picture so that the road was lit up, and the sun was actually behind them to the right. The fronts of their bodies were in shade because of this, but it makes a better image than direct sunlight which can be very harsh. We fired a little fill-in flash on the runners to pick out the white lettering on their kit and just reduce the shadows a little.

The final step was to create a poster for them to hang in the gym. The idea behind this is to provide inspiration to Matfen’s leisure club members, so we thought that by adding a slogan of some kind we would be able to fire up some competitiveness. As our athletes preferred early morning training runs while the rest of us relaxed we thought that “Training is what you are doing while your opponent is sleeping in” was appropriate.

You can click on the image in this post to get a better look at it.

We’ve been photographing food again, this time at the AA Rosetted restaurant at Eslington Villa in Low Fell, near Newcastle upon Tyne.

They’ve recently been reviewed by the local press, and were asked for an image of the restaurant to go alongside the article. We decided to create an image where the main subject is a dish from the menu but you also get a feel for how pleasant it is in the restaurant itself.

Luckily for us the restaurant has windows on three sides, so there’s plenty of natural light. This is a good starting point, but on it’s own isn’t really enough to give us the shot we want.

We arrived at the restaurant mid morning, unpacked the kit and then took an ambient meter reading. We want to try and utilise as much of this ambient light as we can, as this gives us a nice, even, natural fill light. It wasn’t quite bright enough for what we wanted though, so the flashguns were unpacked.

Food always looks best when lit from behind, so the first flash was set on a lighting stand behind and to the left of the table which the food was positioned on. We couldn’t have the light directly behind it as the light stand would be visible in shot. We used a shoot through umbrella to give a nice, soft light which spreads over a large area.

We set the power of the flash to be slightly stronger than the ambient light, so enough to light the table but not completely overpower the rest of the scene. In effect we’re using the flashgun as a main light and then the ambient light as a fill light. We also placed a large, white reflector in front and to the left of the plate of food. The front right of the plate was lit quite nicely by the window light, but the left hand side needed a little help.

This by itself would create a reasonably good image, but we want to make more of the actual restaurant, and the background was looking a little dull compared to the well lit table of food. The ambient light from the window just wasn’t quite punchy enough. A second flash was placed on a lighting stand, another shoot through umbrella was used, and the power set to provide a little more light for the background of the shot. It doesn’t overpower the natural window light or the tungsten lamps on the ledge though.

What we end up with is an image that lights the food well, is sympathetic to the ambient, but fills in the background where the light is lacking. The exposure takes into account the trees in the garden, which can be seen through the windows. While we didn’t want these sharp, we also didn’t want them completely under or over exposed.

It’s often overlooked, but the background of photographs can play a crucial part of the success of the overall image, so it needs some attention and thought.

It’s a balancing act, but it’s another example of how flexible it can be using manual hotshoe flashguns on lighting stands. The ease of use, portability and no requirement for mains power makes it an ideal choice for this kind of photography.

You can click on the images in this post to see larger versions. We’ve included two of the many final versions, and also a shot of the lighting set up at top of the page.

For those interested in the technicalities we used a Fuji S5 Pro with a Sigma 30mm f1.4 lens (at f4, ISO 200), and an exposure of 1/40 sec. The flashguns were the excellent manual only Lumopro LP160, mounted on standard lighting stands with a lastolite hotshoe adapter, which allows us to add an umbrella (a Westcott shoot through). The flash power settings were calculated using good old mathematics after taking an ambient reading on a Sekonic light / flash meter.

“Learn to light anywhere”. Four words that have probably changed the way I approach my photography more than any others.

I’ve realised that as photographers we can’t simply rely on the light that we are presented with in a scene. Sometimes we need to visualise what we want to achieve, and to be able to control how much light appears in our images regardless of what we are photographing.

We were recently asked to photograph Matfen Hall Hotel at night. There was a corporate event going on that evening and the hosting company had organised a rotating lightshow to be displayed throughout the night. This is kind of like a large spotlight that spins and rotates, firing light beams into the night sky.

I set up the camera in the gardens of the hotel, took a meter reading at ISO 100, did some maths, set an aperture of f11 and came up with an exposure of four minutes. The first test shot came out like this.

Whilst this first image isn’t too bad, it’s not particularly well balanced. There are quite a lot of dark areas in there that ideally could do with lightening up, but we’re going to need some pretty powerful lights to do that aren’t we?

Well actually, no. Believe it or not we can light up the whole of the hall plus the gardens with a simple hotshoe flashgun. My weapon of choice is a manual flashgun made by Lumopro.

It has a guide number of 100 and is a manual flash with none of this fancy ‘TTL’ metering malarky. You determine the exposure with good old fashioned mathematics, set the required output, and you’re off!

So, here’s how it’s done. I set an exposure of four minutes at f11 to expose correctly for what little ambient light there is. During this four minute exposure  I walk around the scene at a reasonably brisk pace firing flash into the areas that I want to light up. By walking quickly I ensure that there is no visible trace of me on the exposure, and I’m careful to shield the flashgun with my jacket to make sure that all the camera sees is the result of the flash and not the source of it.

I fired a couple of blasts onto the wall, two blasts onto three sections of the hotel, another two blasts on the seats in the garden, then one on the urn of flowers on the pedestal. I also fired to the left and right of the urn to light up the grass. When walking back towards the camera I fired a couple more blasts into the lawn. This walk around takes around three minutes, so I leave the shutter open for another minute before the image is complete.

To see the effect of all this you can click on the two images above for an enlarged view.

There’s no Photoshop trickery going on here, what you see is direct from the camera and is a good example of our principles of getting it right in camera.

I’ve been helping my nephew recently with his photography degree by walking him through a studio session. We spent the first half of the session going through some technical theory, then the second half actually taking some images.

Lighting diagram shown above. Note the ball with the star in denotes the position of the candle.

He’s working on a theme which is all about capturing movement in nature in an abstract form. I noticed a little while ago how interesting smoke from an extinguished candle can be, and what amazing patterns it can produce. Well, smoke is natural, and photographing it well in an abstract way will involve a lot of thought (so good for a project). It seemed an appropriate thing to try.

So, what’s the best way to photograph gently swirling patterns of smoke? To catch it in an abstract way I think it needs to be shot at a high shutter speed, and frozen with flash. This will give us a glimpse of all the turbulence in the air that is so miniscule to us that we don’t notice it, but has an effect on how the smoke travels upwards.

I chose a black background, this was a piece of black cloth held against a wall. Ideally I would like to have used some incence sticks for a constant stream of smoke, but I didn’t have any so I used a candle instead and kept blowing out the flame to get the smoke effect I wanted. The camera was tripod mounted, and I used two off-camera flashguns fired by radio remotes. The flashes were positioned to the left and right of the candle, at right angles to the direction the camera was pointing.

I needed to make sure that no stray light hit the black background as I wanted it to stay completely black. This was done by using squares of card as makeshift gobo’s (go betweens). A gobo allows you to shield an area from light, in the same kind of way that a set of barn doors will. I also used some card to shield the camera lens from light from the flashes, as without these there was quite a bit of lens flare about. If I used my studio lights with spill-kills on as illustrated then this wouldn’t be necessary as these act as a hood and stop stray light from leaking everywhere.

I chose a small aperture (f11) as I wanted as much of the smoke to be in focus as possible, and shot at 1/250 second. The hardest part was getting the smoke in the right place as it just drifts around wherever it wants to. Blowing the candle out as gently as possible did the trick, and at the end of the shoot there were a good selection of images to choose from. Click on the examples below for a larger image.

This post follows up a previous one talking about a new plan of mine to build a lightweight portable lighting set-up which can be used just about anywhere. You can read this post here if you’ve missed it. I ended the post with a promise to test the idea out and see how it all works, and this is the result of that test.

I’ve been working quite a lot recently with studio lighting, and I enjoy the total control that it gives me over the final image. The plan I have though is to use portable flashguns on studio stands rather than mains powered studio flash heads. The flashguns will still be radio triggered, and still fired through the same modifiers as the studio heads (such as softboxes and umbrellas), but can they deliver the quality of light that the studio heads do? I suspected that they could, and I’ve been proved right.

Let’s cover the benefits of this style of photography. Firstly, there’s portability. Two hotshoe flashguns weigh much less than two studio flash heads, and you don’t need to carry mains cables as they are battery powered. The second main benefit is that of cost. A suitable manual flashgun can be picked up for £50 if you don’t already have one, a lighting stand with a hotshoe adapter costs as little as £25 (it doesn’t need to be heavy duty as it’s only holding a flashgun) and a set of radio triggers can be bought for £20 on eBay. A small shoot through umbrella will be around £20, throw in £15 for a charger and set of batteries and you’re all done for £130.

Now we’re all set up and ready to go I had three main questions I wanted answering. The first was just how good a quality of light can you get out of a flashgun compared to a studio light. The second was how quickly the flashes would recycle – would they keep up with the speed that I shoot at. Finally, I wanted to know how easy it was to shoot without the built in modelling lights that the studio heads have – it’s always much easier to focus in a bright environment with modelling lights on rather than in dim light with flashguns.

Regarding quality of light, I can’t really see a difference between the light that the studio heads produce compared to the flashes.

I set my flashguns to shoot through a large umbrella, and if I set the flashgun’s diffuser to the wide setting I’ve found that it can quite easily fill the umbrella with light. Placing this large light source as close to the subject as possible gives a lovely soft light. I found that I used the flash on various power settings, but usually between one quarter and one sixteenth of full power.

This was perfect as it means that the batteries last longer, and the recycle times are fast. I shot over 500 images in this test shoot and the flash only failed to recycle twice, and the same set of rechargeable batteries lasted the full session.

The camera’s autofocus system seemed to cope reasonably well in the lower light. Had I been using studio lights I would have switched the modelling lights on to help, but my flashguns don’t have these so I had to focus in ambient light. Now and then the autofocus assist light on the camera would kick in to help out, but generally it handled it well.

The big plus point for me is portability and ease of set up. I carried just two bags to the shoot, the first was my usual camera bag and the second contained my light stands and umbrellas.  Moving the flashes around once they were set up was so easy, and they aren’t restricted to being near a mains socket so there’s considerable freedom in where you shoot.

In this instance the flashguns were more than powerful enough for what I needed. For jobs where a high output isn’t required but speed is of the essence I can definitely see myself reaching for the speedlites and travelling light rather than heading for the studio.

If you’re looking at photographing food then a good place to start is a search on the internet. If you do this you’ll probably find these recurring ‘top tips’.

They are:

• Don’t use flash, use natural light
• Get the camera on a tripod
• Use a wide aperture (to blur distracting parts of the image).

I was asked to head down to Seaham Hall to photograph a couple of dishes from their nationally renowned ‘White Room’ restaurant. It doesn’t get much better than this, if you’re going to photograph food you might as well photograph something like the quality of the cuisine that’s produced here.

It’s all a question of timing though. I know how hard chefs work at this level and the long hours they put in, so it helps if you can fit in with their busy schedule. Through the day they tend to be running a lunch service and preparing for the evening. After 6pm is generally well out of bounds, so the best option to shoot is just as the kitchen is about to close. I arrived at 9pm when the bulk of the main courses had already been sent – this allowed the chef time to prepare the two dishes for me and then get himself home for a reasonable hour.

Contrary to the opening ‘top tips’ in this post I decided to use flash, not use a tripod, and use a smaller aperture to keep the whole dish in focus – after all, the rules are there to be broken! My new motto in photography is ‘learn to light everywhere’. I really believe that we should be able to turn up to any location at any time with any brief and from that be able to produce a good image.  So it’s dark outside and there is no natural light, there’s a restaurant service going on in the room next door so the lights are low and there’s not an abundance of power outlets? This shouldn’t matter, we should still be able to deliver the goods. As usual with posts in this blog you can click on any of the images for a larger version.

There’s nothing wrong with using flash for food photography, it’s just that daylight is the easy option. The trick is to modify the light to make it softer. I admit that using on camera flash is a recipe (if you’ll pardon the pun) for disaster, and it’s likely it’s this kind of flash that the various websites offering advice suggest avoiding. I’ve recently taken to using hotshoe flashes, lighting stands and umbrellas as a portable studio set up (you can read more about this here), and that’s what I chose to use here. No power sockets required, easy to transport through hotel corridors and quick and quiet to set up (and break down).

Usually when we light a subject with studio lights (or flash) we position the lights in front of the subject – this sounds logical, in fact even obvious, but with food photography you tend to find that you get the best results positioning the lights behind the item. We used a 105cm diameter shoot through umbrella on a lighting stand with a Lumopro flashgun set on half power positioned behind the dish, triggered by a radio remote. In front of the dish was a Lastolite reflector which bounced some of the light back in to gently fill shadows. An aperture of f8 was used to keep everything in focus.

Sometimes I like to select a wide aperture for food photography as this blurs the background, but the White Room is so called for a reason. White table cloths, white plates, white napkins – it’s white! In this contemporary venue there is no colour except for the food, so it doesn’t make sense to blur it as it’s really the only detail in the whole shot. Had there been background detail I may have thought differently, but this wasn’t the case.

So, the usual rules now apply. A larger light source closer to the subject produces a softer light, so the shoot through umbrella is positioned as close to the dish as we can without it intruding into the frame. We light from behind the dish and reflect back in to fill the shadows. We’ve set the white balance on the camera before hand but it doesn’t really matter as seeing there is only one light source and we’re shooting in RAW we can adjust this in post production. The vibrance of the image is increased a little in Adobes excellent ‘Lightroom’ software, and that’s it! We’re done!

Looks good enough to eat? I think so, and if you would like to sample the finished item then I would recommend a visit to Seaham Hall – its an experience to be savoured, that’s for sure.

I’ve been reading about lighting. Again!

I’ve been reading a blog written by a guy called David Hobby who’s at the forefront of a re-emerging technique of using flashguns off camera to light his images. People who do this are referred to as ‘Strobists’ and I’m happy to say that I’m quickly becoming converted to it.

I’ve never really been a fan of the studio, I think that it can actually be limiting as in essence its just a room with a load of lights in, and maybe a choice of coloured backgrounds. I suppose that a studio is what you make it, and you can replicate any situation within it, but at a cost. I much prefer to shoot on location and bring the studio lights with me.

On a location shoot I’ve generally used a fairly portable set of lights made by Multiblitz. They are a reasonably high output of 400W and come complete with lighting stands and are powered from the mains. I’ve added to this a variety of light modifiers, including soft boxes and umbrellas, and it’s a good, well built, extremely reliable piece of kit.

An up and coming assignment though involves a photoshoot in a health spa. The idea of trailing cables across the wet floor of a steam room, and setting up lighting next to a swimming pool and jacuzzi didn’t sit very well with me – it’s not good PR if you electrocute your models. I reckon that the way to do this is through the use of portable flash.

So I read up on the idea of using a number of hotshoe flashguns (the type you attach direct to your camera) on lighting stands to light my scenes rather than the usual combination of mains powered studio lights.

A studio flash head is basically a powered light which has an output that is manually controlled. You can adjust the power setting which allows you to decide how your subject is lit. You can add gels to these flash heads which will balance the light temperature to that of the ambient light. You can trigger the lights through either a cable, or if you are really fancy then a radio remote, and when one light detects the flash from the other it too will fire. You can add umbrellas, soft boxes and other light modifers and have complete control over your final image.

With a hotshoe flashgun you can also do exactly the same thing!

The differences? There are two main ones. The first is how the device is powered. Studio flash heads are mains powered, and so typically have very fast recycle times (how long it takes for the unit to be ready to fire again). You don’t need to worry about how long you can shoot for, you can just keep on going. Hotshoe flashes are usually powered by four AA batteries. The longer you shoot on the same set of batteries then the longer the recycle time, and eventually they are going to run out.

The second difference is related to the first, and that’s as the hotshoe flashguns are battery powered they are extremely lightweight, can work anywhere independently of a power supply and are incredibly portable. They can go anywhere.

The last big difference is that of power output. Studio flash heads are much more powerful than hotshoe flashes, but how much power do you need? I often add neutral density gels to my studio lights to bring the power down, so can I get the same results with hotshoe flash as with studio lights?

Well, there’s only one way to find out! In the next week or two I’ll be doing a full portfolio photoshoot on location, but I won’t be bringing the £1,500 worth of studio lights with me. I’ll be taking two lighting stands, a couple of Lumopro hotshoe flashes (at £120 per unit), a couple of umbrellas and some colour correction gels. And maybe I’ll throw a reflector in there too. The principles are exactly the same, and that’s controlling light and putting the right amount of it in the right place.

So, can a simple ‘strobist’ set-up replace a set of mains powered studio flash heads? I think it’s a question of power, and so far I’m inclined to say that generally for what I do they probably can. It’s certainly going to be interesting finding out, so watch this space . . . .

Of all the genres of photography I work in, for me portraiture is the most challenging and most rewarding.

Portraiture is incredibly personal, and there’s so much more to taking a good portrait than just taking a snapshot of an individual. To me it’s not just about capturing a likeness of a person on film, it’s about capturing something about them as a person too.

With this in mind, I’ve put together my top 5 portraiture tips which I think if followed should produce a pretty good result!

Engage your subject

This depends a lot on who your subject is. If you are photographing a person in a more formal setting and they are completely aware of what you are doing then you’ve got to get them relaxed. You’ve got to break the ice, talk to them, joke around a little if appropriate, tell them what you are doing and why, and what you want to achieve. You’ve got to relax too, if you don’t then your subject won’t either.

If you are photographing children then get them doing something that they like doing. Get them focussed on a fun thing so that you effectively no longer exist in that space, and then shoot away. Don’t tell a child to sit still, look at the camera and smile!

Get closer

Fill the frame, get in close and compose the image so you can really see the character of the subject, the facial expressions, the smile and the eyes. If you’ve got a zoom lens then use the long end so you’re not literally a foot from their face. If you use an SLR then use a medium telephoto. This also flattens perspective slightly – too close in with a wide lens makes noses long and ears disappear! Take care with what you leave in the frame too. If you’re outdoors watch out for lamp posts growing out of heads, distracting signposts and things like that.

Understand your equipment

Know how your camera works, and understand its strengths and limitations. Never try new, untried techniques without also utilising those which you know will get you a shot. Play it safe, THEN experiment. Check your settings too, for example make sure you’re not shooting at ISO 1000 in daylight because you forgot to change the setting from the low light shoot you were doing the night before. If all you do is keep your camera in full auto mode then that’s fine, so long as you understand how it works and how the results are likely to come out.

It’s all about the light

Probably the most important aspect of a portrait is the lighting. The easiest way to produce a flattering shot is to take the shot outdoors on a reasonably bright but overcast day. Shooting in direct sunlight produces very contrasty images, so although people like being in the sun for photography it’s not ideal. On-camera flash can be useful in bright sunshine as it fills in those dark shadows, but other than this it can be particularly harsh and unflattering. In low light if you have to use flash then see if you can bounce it off a wall or ceiling, or use some kind of diffuser. With a compact you’re pretty much stuck with direct flash, though you can always try a couple of shots with the ISO turned up and the flash turned off.

A diffused light source from an angle rather than head on can be particularly flattering. In the studio we can control this to a tee, out and about this is more difficult but there are probably things around you that can help. Positioning your subject next to a light coloured wall gives you an instant reflector to bounce light back, or shooting under trees should give you a gentler, more diffused light. Try a variety of ideas in the same shoot and see what works, then learn from it.

There’s more about lighting here on another of my blog posts.

Ease off the post processing

Imaging software these days is very good. You can do all sorts with it, including repairing images, removing items you don’t want in shot, and applying various effects to improve different scenes.

Go easy on this though. Overuse of software can make your images look a bit odd, especially attempts to airbrush skin. An incredible number of portrait images fail here because after processing they just don’t look real. A well taken portrait should require very little post production, so know when to stop. Usually I balance colours, subtly adjust the exposure if I need to in order to emphasise shadows and highlights and then gently sharpen the image. Never use a Photoshop filter just because it is there.

There’s many more things to consider, but I think that these can be picked up as you go along provided you get the basics right. If you want to see some more examples of our portraiture sessions then you can visit our portrait site at http://www.elmportrait.co.uk.

There’s been a lot in the press about this recently, so it’s a topical subject to write a blog post about. We see it on just about every fashion magazine cover in the high street these days, and nobody is safe from it. Tennis star Andy Roddick had his biceps ballooned so that the image would go with the ‘Big Arms’ headline on the cover of Mens Fitness, Kate Winslet was airbrushed on the cover of GQ to appear slimmer, and Keira Knightley had her bust enhanced for the promo shots used on the King Arthur film.

So what is airbrushing? What steps are generally involved in manipulating an image? I’ve been meaning to write a post on this subject for a while, but thought it grossly unfair to pick on one of my previous portrait or boudoir shoots and show how it’s done. I’m sure that the subject would have something to say about that! I needed to find somebody with imperfections and who isn’t bothered about them, and who doesn’t mind being the subject of a post about making their old features look younger.

After a couple of days of thought I realised I knew the perfect candidate. And here we are, the result is my first venture in front of the camera rather than behind it!

The camera (a Fuji S5 Pro with Nikon 85mm lens) was tripod mounted, a softbox placed close to my head on the left and a reflector on the right. The self timer was set to two seconds, and the exposure underexposed by two stops.

Right then, let’s get down to business! Any of the images in this post can be clicked on to show a higher resolution version. The original image straight off the camera was this one below. The softbox provides a fairly soft light, but if you click on this image you’ll see all the imperfections in the skin, lines in the forehead, bags under the eyes, spots, moles, in fact everything!

The first step in airbrushing is a bit like the first step in makeup – and that’s dealing with the base layer. Many imaging software packages have a skin softening tool built in. This effectively allows you to select the skin colour using an eye dropper tool and then apply an amount of blur, and then allow an amount of detail to show through. This adjustment only applies to the skin colour, so hair, eyes, and lips remain sharp and unaffected. The image below shows our test image after this step has been applied.

This has taken a lot of the texture and blemishes of the skin out, the difficulty is doing this without making the skin look plastic. So, now we have smoothed the skin the next step is to make me look a few years younger. The lines in the forehead need to go, and this is done by using a cloning tool in Photoshop. Basically, we paint over the lines in the forehead with a texture sampled from another part of the skin. We can also remove some of the larger spots or moles. The result is shown below:

The next step is where the fine line in airbrushing is often crossed, and that’s by physically adjusting the appearance. In the glossy fashion magazines this is where waistlines are slimmed and other parts enhanced, but with my photograph I think I’ll fix the nose I broke when I was six, remove the bags from under my eyes (it’s been a tough week!) and slim my face slightly. And while we’re at it lets whiten the eyes! The result follows:

The last step is purely a choice of style, and that’s converting the image to a toned black and white version. A little film grain effect is added – this also helps cover any over enthusiastic smoothing of the skin. We’ll bring out the eyes a little, and finally add a soft focus effect. The final version is shown below along with the original.

If you would like to view each image in sequence to see step by step results then click on the colour image above and then click the arrow that appears when you mouse over the right side of it. Continue until you get to the final black and white image.

And there we have it. So, is airbrushing a useful tool that an art director can use to make a model look his or her absolute best, or does it set a dangerous precedent, where impossibly perfect models appear every day on the front cover of magazines in full view of impressionable youngsters who feel that they can never live up to an image that society expects of them?

It’s a difficult question to answer, and I’m still not 100% sure where I stand on it. I think ultimately it depends on the purpose of the image. For example, if on one of our boudoir shoots I was asked to retouch an image then I probably would without feeling too guilty about it. These are private images, usually between a couple in a relationship, and they aren’t going to be seen by anybody else. If the subject wants a little help to look their absolute best then why not, but within reason.

I think it’s a different question when we’re talking about images in the public domain though. A little bit of skin softening here and there isn’t a bad thing, and if a customer turns up to a portrait shoot with a big spot then it’s easily removed. In fact it’s not too different to what most ladies do with their make-up anyway. When it comes to physically altering a body to conform to what’s seen in society as being ‘beautiful’ it’s a worrying trend though. Nobody should grow up believing that they are not normal based on an opinion formed from an airbrushed image in a magazine, especially when the person portrayed in that image is a role model to the viewer.

So what do I think of the images now that I have been airbrushed? Well, I’m not too offended by the end result, but I can’t help but feel that it isn’t really me. I think I could comfortably take it as far as step two where a little bit of skin softening has been applied but features and lines are still visible. After all, it’s these ‘imperfections’ that make us who we are.