Beautiful Faces

Portrait photography or portraiture is photography of a person or group of people that displays the expression, personality, and mood of the subject. Like other types of portraiture, the focus of the photograph is usually the person's face, although the entire body and the background or context may be included. Wikipedia

There is nothing more appealing to another person than to look upon a beautiful face, specially if the eyes are intriguing.

Portraits play a big part in most photography and when you come upon someone who has a beautiful face, a face that makes people stop and stare then you have done a good job since the aim of most photos is to make people stop and look.

This is a basic principle of most advertisement since they depend on people looking at the ads and the longer they look the more likely they are to remember the brand and they spend vasts amounts of money to ensure that their ads and the accompanying photos are nothing short of perfection.

The faces that you capture on your photos should not even need to be retouched digitally, although his always helps it is often not necessary depending on the beauty of the model.

A model who has a beautiful face will still need the help of a good makeup artist in order to bring out the finer details of the face.

Light make up, in other words, makeup that does not overly hide or is so thick that you cannot tell was behind it.

The makeup should be done so that instead of hiding it highlights the face's best features and this is probably the most important part of the process.

Tones should be light enough to hide any smaller imperfections, should be carefully applied to highlight certain areas like the lips and around the eyes but most important it should bring the attention to those areas.

The only portion of the face that perhaps should have more of a makeup presence is around the eyes but this should only be done if the makeup enhances their looks and complements the color of the eyes. Besides the eye area only the lips should require some makeup work.

By beautiful it is meant that there should be no major skin discolorations like freckles, no tattoos, no scars, not a heavy suntan, no general blemishes, pimples, facial hair or anything else that will distract the view or interfere with the natural beauty of the face.

For the sake of this particular project "perfection" is what should be aimed for. You should look at models through the viewfinder and not only with the naked eye.

Remember that what the eye sees is not always what the camera captures.

The human eye sees far more detail that any camera. If the portrait appears fine when looking at through the viewfinder then you more than likely have a good subject. Now your job is to work with your subject to bring out the beauty of it.

This may be considered to be fine art portraiture photography and in a sense it is. You must use good lighting , pay attention to details, use a good prime lens and a good non distracting backdrop.

Also keep in mind the model's hair. If she has nice looking hair that can be used to enhance her appearance and complement her facial features pay just as much attention to arranging it appropriately as you would do her makeup, posing, and posture.

One or two good main lights placed to one side or one on each side of the model at a 45 degree angle, one good reflector on the other side and also placed at a 45 degree angle, one beauty dish and perhaps a hair light behind the model plus a background light to illuminate the backdrop and eliminate shadows should be enough.

Intermingle black and whites pictures with color so that you create a balanced set. Some portfolios benefit from having color and monochromes together and some publications require both color and monochrome samples in order to judge which images are best for their purposes.

Other items like a snoot, and ring light to create highlights in the eyes do help but are not essential.

Use the pictures for a book project, for galleries and to showcase your work for potential individual clients, and to submit to photo related publications as examples of your technique.

One of the best uses for this technique however is to advertise yourself to other models that may use your work to enhance or refresh their modeling portfolios.

The world of modeling is very competitive and models are always looking for an edge. If your portraits are great then it reasons that you can do the same for their portfolios.

Showing beautiful face samples entices others to seek your services in the hopes that you can make them look just as good as the individuals shown on your photographs..