Before and After {Nathalia's Beauty Portraits}

Here's one of my most recent transformations at the studio.  From casual, fresh clean face to gorgeous cover girl.

Elisa Beauty Portraits

I truly believe every woman IS beautiful and every woman deserves a beautiful, timeless portrait of herself.

This is why for a while I've been specializing in these kinds of portraits: Beauty Portraits.

Give me a call at (801) 687-6258 for a complimentary 10 minute consultation, or give me your email so I can send a beautiful pdf describing the full Beauty Portrait experience your way.

How I Shot It - Unexpected Hack to Get the Hazy Look

Can you guess what I used to create this hazy look on the image above? You might be entertained to find out:

This was one of those lucky shots, because truly, everything seemed to be fighting against me at this shoot. This was actually a personal shoot I did with a good friend of mine, Jessica, as my beautiful model. The whole point of this shoot was for me to achieve a "natural lighting look with artificial light and/or modifiers". In my head I was going for the Anthropologie catalog look, so I knew I wanted the final image to seem effortless and yet evoke some feeling.

Well, effortless is not how I would describe the process to get this shot! 

When I mentioned everything was against me it was mostly because my babysitter plans went down the drain and so here I was, shooting with a 10-mo baby girl hanging in front of me on one of those baby slings. As a result, there went my hopes of fidgeting with setting up huge lights and scrims on location, on my own, AND with a baby on my lap at all times.

So instead of using additional lights I went for a simple white reflector. Because the setting sun was behind Jessica (backlight), that white reflector really brought more light and pop to her face. 

But that wasn't enough for me (you know, to carry a baby, handle a camera AND hold a reflector, haha!). I knew I wanted the hazy sun look, with light drenching from everywhere and possibly some dust in the air to help set the mood.

So first we tried actually throwing dust in front of the camera and shoot quickly. We were at a farm setting so I found a piece of old cardboard and used it to throw the dust towards my patient model (thanks for being a trooper, Jessica!). But when at my third trial my sloppy hand-throwing skills had both me, my camera and especially baby girl coughing and all covered in DIRT, I caved in that it wasn't a wise idea. =P

Ultimately, that hazy look was achieved by putting an object right up against the lens of my camera. In this case it happened to be my baby girl's hair that was getting in the way of most shoots anyway. LOL Talk about resourcefulness! ;)

So if you ever feel like your image needs that little extra, give this technique a try:

1- Find a flower, bring a chrystal, and I've even seen it done with white cellphone cases.

2- Hold it right up against the lens so as to make it lose focus and suddenly bring in that amazing effect to your frame.

3- Voilà!