How to light mature skin

[rachel_stephens1]

I make most of my living from portraits of older women and while I love what I

do, it is very tedious work in post and there has to be a better way to light.

I use strobes and ambient light, typically I will use ambient light as a

hairlight or backlight on the background if one is used at all and the main

light is always a strobe shot through a softbox at different angles.

 

Every wrinkle shows and my experience is that the proofs have been so

unforgiving for my older gals that to increase print sales and consumer

satisfaction, I end up retouching ALL of the images (around 100-160) before I

send the proofs to them for image selections (as I include 8 images for them to

select for retouching).

 

Does anyone have any lighting tricks or tips for mature skin?

 

Thanks!

[adw]

Wrinkles look amazing in some photos, to realy emphisise them use a hard, snooted light at

an angle to their skin, or sit them against a small window, etc.

 

To try and get rid of them try a large softbox camera right and then a small reflecter camera

left to remove their shadows.

 

You may find excessive removing of wrinkels will end up offending someone?

[rachel_stephens1]

Thank you. I will try that technique. The majority of my clients want to see a idealistic product so I end up aggresively retouching most of them. I always find out before hand as we are shooting how they want to see themselves. It is pretty sad that our society feeds us an unattainable standard of beauty that for many women can only be satisfied by combating it with the same smoke and mirror techniques that make celebrities and models look so flawless.

[emre]

Use a bigger softbox (bring it up close) or use diffusion on the lens.

[reinhard_scheuregger]

rachel,

 

depending on your model'S skin i got best results aiming the softbox (huge softbox)

straight at the model. my rule of thumb is: about 6 feet away and about 6 feet high,

angled downwards. so you will be ending up shooting underneath the box.

my experience is, that even the slightest angle of the axis makes wrinkles jump out. i do

that only with models with flawless skin.

another little helper is, place a reflector right underneath the model's chest, it will lighten

up her neck, soften those grooves around the nose plus give a nice glow in her eyes.

 

reinhard

[beauh44]

Hi Rachel, You might try some of the soft-focus filters that are available out there. Some are better than others and produce completely different effects so you may find some you like and some you don't. A $1.50 black scarf from Wal-Mart (no, I'm not kidding) wrapped around the lens tightly can produce a very nice soft-focus effect that again, some people like and some don't. If you decide to try it, you'll get different effects depending on the aperture you use too. Good luck!

[bkpix]

Rachel:

 

I've certainly had my share of "can't you make me look younger/thinner?" responses from portrait clients.

 

Sometimes, of course, the truthful answer is, "No."

 

But you can try, anyway. Attention to posing helps; position the model to stretch out flabby areas of skin and make them look young and taut. High contrast/high key lighting can even out bad complexions. As one poster suggested, soft focus diffusion can help.

 

I wonder whether there might be a way to educate your clients better to accept themselves as they are? Perhaps present yourself as a photographer who documents real-life women, because it's real life that makes them so beautiful?

 

So much is psychology....

 

Good luck.

 

BK

[igord]

I photographed a lot of older woman and I had to make them look good.

I used 2 silver umbrellas, one as a key above the camera and little to the side, second - fill just under the key and just next to my camera with bit of less power. It works.