Lloyd K. Barnes Photography

Here's a video slideshow with images from a glamour portrait photography session with Jennifer Ruth and Kaitlin Sullivan. (Click here to see the video if you are using an iPhone, iPod Touch or iPad). I met Jennifer at the Twisted Fairytale fashion show in March 2010 and loved her makeup work. Since we were both building our portfolios, we collaborated on a project with the beautiful and talented Vancouver model Kaitlin Sullivan. Jennifer did amazing work with the makeup, hair and styling for six different looks during the session. I did the shoot in the studio using basic portrait lighting setups to showcase the makeup and hairstyling.

For the first set Jennifer gave Kaitlin big pink feathered lashes, wet glittery pink lips and curly hair, with a pink feather boa and a chunky jeweled bracelet. Quite a glamourous look!

I used White Lightning strobes - the main light was an X800 equipped with a beauty dish. I love the light from the beauty dish - it is largish white reflector so the light is pretty soft, but it has some shadow definition that helps give more shape to the face. I used a white foam core reflector panel, as well as a reflector disk to fill in the shadows.

I normally use a lower power main light for portraits so that it does not interfere with the background lighting. I meter everything using a Sekonic Flash Master L-358, starting with the main light. The White Lightnings are great to use because I can easily fine tune the output. I used an X3200 with softbox for the hair light, located camera right, behind Kaitlin. I use a more powerful strobe mainly because the distance is further, but also it gives me the opportunity to increase the brightness of the side light or hair light to give more intense highlights. For a  natural look, the hair light was adjusted to about a stop or so brighter than the beauty dish. The background was storm grey seamless paper (medium grey), with a gridded X1600 for a back burst. To meter the background, I used the reflected light attachment for the Sekonic and adjusted the light to give a gradient with the brightest part about a stop to a stop-and-half brighter than the main light. I used barndoors on the X1600 to control the light spill away from Kaitlin. I also used a hair fan for some of the shots, which you can see in the video.

One of the difficulties with large feathered lashes is the shadows that they cast over the eyes. Usually I like to get sparkling highlights on the eyes to give the portrait more life. With large lashes, I watch the highlights very carefully to make sure the eyes are not too dark. Another option is to have the model look down to show off the lashes.

The strobes were triggered using CyberSyncs. My camera is an Olympus E-510, and I used Olympus Studio 2 to tether the camera to my MacBook, I used Lightroom 3 and Photoshop CS4 for the post-processing. I will be posting more information on post-processing in future blog posts.

Here's a diagram of the basic set-up. Thanks to Kevin Kertz Photography for creating the template. It's awesome and free!

In the second set, Jennifer used silver feathered lashes, silver lipstick and a hot pink bob wig for Kaitlin. For accessories, we had a black feather boa, diamond costume jewelry and huge ring with black beads. Kaitlin was lying down on a white faux fur for these shots. Other than lowering the lights, the setup was the same as the first buy viagra buy seroquel baikal-pharmacy.com cheaper set. I also took some of the shots from above using a ladder.

Jennifer totally switched up the look this time, with a long black wig, metallic blue lips, and copper eye shadow. We had a blue ostrich feather, a rhinestone owl ring with blue and amber gems to match the makeup. This set was shot using natural light against the grey seamless background paper, which was lit with a gridded X800 and blue gel to complement the lips. The studio has loading bay door, so we opened it up and shot using the daylight. The light was not super bright, so I used ISO 200 and a fast prime lens -  Sigma 30 mm f/1.4.  I love the shallow depth of field of the wide aperture, but was careful to make sure that Kaitlin's eyes were in focus. The large light source coming from the open garage door was beautiful and soft. We did have quite an audience gathered at the loading bay watching with great interest!

For the next set, Jennifer created a beautiful look with gold lips with blue eyes gradually shaded to gold, perfectly matching the colourful gems in Kaitlin's earrings. I used a large softbox for the main light, and another large softbox behind Kaitlin, camera right. The background was lit with a gridded strobe to give soft gradient effect. I often use my 50-200mm zoom lens for portraits because it doesn't distort the face as much as a wider angle lens does. The Olympus Zuiko 50-200mm zoom is awesome - tack sharp with a wonderful depth of field at wider apertures. The only drawback for using it in the studio is I have to go quite far away from the model. On the other hand, not being right in her face gives an opportunity for different expressions, depending on the model. I like to mix it up and I'm always switching the lenses during the shoot!

For the next set, Kaitlin's makeup featured pink and purple with a hint of gold. I used the same lighting setup as the previous set, except with two gels on the background light - blue and red - to get a purple to match the makeup and necklace. I used o have a purple gel but it melted down a few months ago in an unfortunate accident! Kaitlin was sitting in a large circular chair with a black cushion for these photos. I like to have the model stand, sit, lie down, or move around, even when just doing headshots, to get a variety of looks.

The final set was done with the Kaitlin's hair in an updo and I used the same lighting setup.

The photography session was very successful - we all got some great images for our portfolios, and it was a pleasure to work with both Jennifer and Kaitlin. Jennifer is amazingly creative and super-organized, which allowed us to get six different awesome beauty looks. Kaitlin was also amazing and I expect to see more of her in the future! She is perfect in front of the camera - easy to direct with lots of creative posing ideas.  I hope to have the opportunity to work with them both again in the future.

Bokeh is normally created in-camera by using a shallow depth-of-field and focusing on the subject and allowing the other parts of the image to become blurry. For this shot I wanted to create a glam look by adding some bokeh in Photoshop.

First I retouched the photo, smoothing the skin and removing any blemishes. There are a variety of ways to do this - here is one short step-by-step example.

I added a blank layer above the top layer, and selected a hard-edged round brush and set the foreground colour to white. I wanted the brush to paint a bunch of random circles so I went to the brush window and selected "shape dynamics" and moved the slider for "size jitter" to around 30%, selected "scattering" and checked "both axes" and moved the slider to around 480%, "count" to 2, and "count jitter" to around 30%. FInally, I selected "other dynamics" and changed the "opacity jitter" to 10%. You might need to play around with the settings to get something that looks good for you. I then painted the layer with a few strokes. I added a layer effect - "gradient overlay" and used white for the foreground colour and some gold from the lips for the background. It was a linear gradient with an angle of 118 degrees, and normal blend mode.  Finally, I adjusted the layer opacity to 67%.

I then added another blank layer above this, and painted some more circles, then I used the Gaussian blur filter to make these blurry. You will need to play around with the radius that best works for you. I added some layer effects - "outer glow" and used the eye dropper to grab some gold colour from the lips, and changed the blend mode to screen. I also used "inner glow" with a light yellow colour (ffffbe).  I used a levels adjustment layer, clipped to this layer and lightened up the bokeh circles until they glowed a little. I then changed the layer opacity to about 50%.

Finally, I used a curves adjustment layer above all the other layers to tweak the contrast of the overall image.

Here's another tutorial for creating an awesome digital bokeh effect.

Here's a video slideshow with images from a shoot with model and hairstylist Candy. Click here to see the video on your iPhone/iPod Touch or iPad. Candy is great to work https://healthcareaide.net/valium/ with and puts a lot of intensity into her modeling. Click here to view some of my previous shoots with Candy.

Fine Art Prints are available - click here!

Here are some more photos of Jennifer Nguyen from a photoshoot that we did in January 2010. We did 4 sets and the first was a natural look with blue jeans. The shoot went great and Jennifer brought some very sexy outfits. I’ll post more of those sets later! Check out Jennifer’s blog and Facebook page if you want see more photos and become a fan!

Click here to see more!

Just for fun!

I took some action photos using the camera’s burst mode during the bubble-blowing set our photoshoot. The burst mode takes a few photos in rapid succession when you hold down the shutter release.

In Photoshop, I  layered a couple of the photos, https://sdarcwellness.com/online-therapy/ aligned them, then used the animation window to create a series of 5 layers using the tween command. I then converted the file from 16 bit to 8 bit mode and went to the File... Save for Web and Devices, and saved as a GIF, resizing and choosing the option to loop the animation forever.

document.write(" let's go party!" href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/kalamakia/4318156236/">This is a photo of model AsianSensation with makeup by artist Megs War Paint. The shoot was fun and sexy with lots of pink and girlie stuff, and definitely made a great Valentine's themed shoot.

The model lives in Montreal and was in Vancouver for the holidays, so we arranged the shoot and planned the makeup, outfit and look. I got hold of some props including a couple Barbie's at the local toy store - wow I didn't know that there are so many Barbies! I also bought a long pink wig - I splurged and bought the higher quality wig for a little extra cost because I wanted it to look good in the photos. I have used cheaper wigs before and they are hard to use - the hair is too thin and frizzy! Now I own a long pink wig - so I'm sure it will https://www.glenerinpharmacy.com/buy-generic-cialis-online/ appear in photoshoots again. I also got lollipops, bubbles, pink tulle fabric, tissue paper and bows.

On the day of the shoot I brought all the stuff and set up the lights while the makeup artist did her magic. I used a white seamless background and lit it with a strobe and pink gel. The model wore a sexy pink nightie and used the tulle for a skirt. The shoot was a lot of fun and the model was great. There were many photos from the shoot making it difficult to select a few for final editing!

We did not plan for this to be a Valentine's Day theme, but looking at the photos, they are perfect for the occasion. Check out this set of photos from the shoot.

Feel free to comment and ask if you have any questions about my work. I am available for bookings, editorial and commercial assignments!