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I got to wrap the year up with an high-end beauty shoot for Bellissimo Galway. The Client being an established hair salon & beauty room in Galway and Limerick, was looking to photograph four up-dos showcasing bridal hair trends for 2018. The mood board I got featured black & white images inspired by the 1960's look. They were expecting a very high-standard of work, both from hair-stylist and the photographer. I was excited for this opportunity.

*Moodboard. Source: Louise's inspirations*

Right choice of models is half the success of the photo shoot.

I was delighted to find out that one of the models was Katie from Catwalk Modeling Agency as I had worked with Katie many times both on commercial and personal projects. I knew she always brought great energy and humor to shoots but also is professional and easy to work with. Our second model was Leonie - I hadn't met her in person but knew of her through instagram. Leonie represented everything that I was looking for in a model for this job: she was elegant, glamorous and very classy. I knew with these two, the shoot itself was going to be so much fun.

Location and some challenges.

source: Bellissimo's website — *source:* *Bellissimo's website*

With the emphasis being on hair we decided to shoot in the salon where Louise, the Elite Stylist in Bellissimo could make the girl's hair spotless. The salon was very specious, so I didn't think it would be a challenge. However on the day, I realized there was a couple of obstacles in the space that I needed to address in order to deliver the high-quality images.

The salon itself was very big and creates a lot of space for stylists and beauticians to work. However from a photographers point of view it's low ceiling and limited free space was a huge difficulty. Luckily I had prior experience with situations like that and instead of dragging big photography backdrops with me, I used a simple roller blind. That cut the space down to about 30% of what I would usually need if I had used a proper photography backdrop. I knew that we would be shooting tight portraits so it worked out just fine.

There was still an issue with light stands as I couldn't extend them to the length that allowed me to control the light in the way that I wanted. I was using a 100 cm white umbrella as key light due to the low ceiling. It was difficult to set the correct position for it but eventually I found the right angle and soon enough I learned that lower position of the light created a strong and dramatic effect on models face.

Gear:

I used full frame Nikon d800 with prime 50mm 1:1,8 lens on tripod. Two Godox v850 flashes were set-up at 1/4 for key light and 1/32 for back light. I kept the ISO low as I wanted to achieve the smooth and glowing skin. F stop was 7.1 and shutter speed 1/80. An oval silver reflector helped me to eliminate chin shadows and created a blink in model's eye.

Photo-shoot & how to make best of it?

I knew that the final images would be in black & white so I decided to use a blue backdrop so I could easily separate the background, skin and hair channels in post-processing.

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The intense bright blue of the backdrop I used allowed me to change the brightness of the background in Lightroom using the black & white mix tool.

See the image below on how changing the color of the blue background doesn't affect and hair and skin tones:

I had my laptop and camera synced, so while shooting the images they appeared on the laptop screen which allowed me to get the photos just right on the camera. While shooting we also checked how the images looked in black & white as well as addressing any hair imperfections. It significantly increased the speed of the shoot as well as the whole turn-around process.

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Thanks to a well organised shoot, it only took us 2 hours to get the images we were looking for. Considering the limitations of the space and the fact there were two models for four looks, I think it's a pretty good time-frame.

Retouching: spotless & shiny photographs

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Once the images were selected they needed to be retouched. The final photographs were going to be printed big so the detail was very important for both me and the Client. I knew exactly who I wanted to finish the photographs for me so I handed them over to one of the most well known retouchers in the industry, mr Pratik Naik from Solstice Retouch. I was super excited to see the final look. Pratik's work is of an extremely high-quality and I was happy to trust him with that task even though I always retouch my own photos. Of course the final files were perfect and I was amazed with the detail and the texture of the skin achieved by Pratik.

When you see your photos blown up to a large scale like that...

With that the shoot was wrapped and ready to be printed and hung. A fellow photographer, Adrian Megahey was taking care of the prints. Adrian has an amazing knowledge about the printing process, so again I felt like they were in good hands.

Source: Adrian Megahey

I was also delighted to see that the ladies from Bellissimo use them at the Dream Wedding Exhibition in Leisureland last weekend.

Source: Louise's instagram — *Source:* *Louise's instagram*

Credits:

Every fashion & beauty photographer knows that you're only as good as the team you work with and I really enjoyed teaming up with such talented ladies::

Client: Bellissimo Galway

Hair-stylist & concept: Louise Jordan

Make-up: Susie Cantwell

Models: Katie Geoghegan & Leonie McGuigan / Catwalk Modeling Agency

Huge thanks to Pratik Naik & Adrian Megahey as well.

And here are the final images: