As a  photographer it’s great when you get the opportunity to work with a good Make Up Artist so imagine how chuffed I was when Emily Rose Conner of  ERC Make up and Hair  contacted me with this idea. Something she’d been thinking of for  while – a gold leaf make over.

She brought the perfect model along too – Tara Moore and my assistant & no 2 photographer Kirsty Lyon was on board too. As we were shooting pretty tightly cropped facial shots we didn’t need to bother with a set as such. We simply chose a blue background roll to give us nice contrast to the gold look.

I was using the Olympus EM1 and shooting such close crops gave me a great excuse to use the 75mm f1.8 lens. Shot at f4.o the shallow depth of field makes the gold leaf look almost superimposed but Tara can assure you it was stuck firmly to her face.

We were using a Damian McGillicuddy 19″ beauty dish to create butterfly lighting and that gave us a beautiful catchlight in Tara’s eyes. We used a Mc Gillicuddy lighting panel as a reflector below Tara’s chin to fill in the shadow areas. This created a second catchlight in the lower part of the eye which was cloned out during editing.

This was the finished look at the end of the evening. See what I mean about Make Up Artists? Emily has done a fantastic job on TaraAmazing eyes and hair as well as the gold leaf and how many models are so beautiful they can wear a beard and still look amazing!

We switched the lighting to two large soft boxes so that we could include a little more of Tara. These were arranged at around 45 degrees at the front of the model, as you can see by the twin catchlights, with one light being set 1 stop lower than the other so that the lighting wasn’t too flat. We also lit the background making it lighter

I think this might be my favourite shot from the session. Tara absolutely gorgeous. Make up absolutely perfect. Photography superb……well ok then but still pretty good hey 🙂

It might be my favourite but that didn’t stop me giving it a full transformation in photoshop.  It can be weird being a photographer. You end up editing late into the night then you are buzzing, so you pour a glass of wine (editing juice) and watch some TV to unwind. This particular night I watched the last half of  Avatar and I thought…….. I know ……………………………

All the shots were taken in my studio – Unity Studios based in St Helens.  The studio is sometimes available for hire and we sometimes run introductory classes where you learn to use the lights and get try them out with a pro model as well as more advanced lighting, studio and camera training. If you are interested in keeping up with our antics please pop along and like my Facebook page Chris Doyle Photography  In-box me or email me via my website if you are interested in any training courses.