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I'm writing a series of articles, each designed to improve one important aspect of your photography. This will be the first in the series.
It doesn't matter if you make your living as a photographer or just pick up your camera on the weekends, your primary task is to make your subjects look better than they've ever looked! Without obvious retouching and "fixes". A job easier said than done.
Unless you are a master retoucher or spend countless hours in Photoshop (or both), it's hard to change too much in a portrait without ruining it. To get seamless retouches, You need to do most of your fixes "in camera".
This first tip concerns acne and wrinkles.
It won't take long in your photo career to realize that teens are plagued with acne and adults have wrinkles. They may or may not actually say anything to you about it, but both age groups want to eliminate or at least lessen their respective problems.
Adults. The deeper and darker our wrinkles, the older we look. It happens to all of us eventually. If we can lighten or even eliminate our wrinkles, we look younger. Fortunately, this is a problem that is easy to fix.
What is a wrinkle? It's a crevice in our face, visually defined by a shadow. It's a 1-2-3 progression. The deeper the wrinkle, the darker the shadow, the older we look. How can we visually take years off our models and get rid of the wrinkles?
Easy, lighten the shadow!
What creates shadows? It's light skimming across the face from the sides or the top. The side light is not able to get into the wrinkle crevices and creates a shadow. The deeper the wrinkle, the darker the shadow. This can (and does) add a lot of visual years to our subject.
Try to avoid the glancing side light and have the light focused directly into the face. The direct light will be able to work it's way into the wrinkles, filling them with light. This will make your model appear much younger. AND save you some time and effort in Photoshop.
Teens with acne? Facial blemishes, pimples and acne scars are at least partially defined by the shadows cast on the face. So, we solve the problem the same way. Avoid skimming the face with light. Use light directly shining into the face and the pimples and scars will be visually minimized
or completely vanish.
In addition to the sun, use your on camera flash or a reflector of some sort to fill in the shadows. Your smooth faced teens and young looking adults will thank you.
You may freely distribute this article as long as it remains intact, unedited and the aurthor bio box is included.
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