Fashion Shoot

[Mata]

This was taken about three weeks ago. Haven’t had the time to edit them properly yet.

I am trying out some specific software aimed at the fashion and beauty photography. Once I have settled on one I will then redo everything for my website and other online outlets.

I have to say compressing them for the forum isn’t doing me or the photographs any good. Most of the detail and colour is getting lost or distorted. Will have to find a different outlet to share the photos from April.

[Mike Farley]

I am trying out some specific software aimed at the fashion and beauty photography. Once I have settled on one I will then redo everything for my website and other online outlets.

It would be interesting to know what you are trying and the conclusion you reach.

I have to say compressing them for the forum isn’t doing me or the photographs any good. Most of the detail and colour is getting lost or distorted. Will have to find a different outlet to share the photos from April.

flickr is an obvious choice as there is no limit on image or file size and you can embed the shot in your post by using the "img" tags. Personally, I prefer to restrict the size of the shots I post as it makes them less desirable to those who do not respect copyright, so the reduced quality is a benefit in that regard. If you achieve your aim of making money from photography, there is an argument that posting optimum quality shots can help establish relationships with clients, but you will need to use services such as TinEye and Google Images to monitor transgressions.

[Mike Farley]

Finding studios is the easy part (time consuming maybe) getting your foot in the door is another? I would say ‘quirky coincidences’ have led me to many studios but only gelled with two at the moment. The one above and an Italian, who naturally being Italian he works with some of the top Italian fashion Houses.

A former member of the club who is now a professional fashion photographer got his experience by working as an assistant for a couple of years and produced a series of stunning shots, presumably taken during the down time you mention elsewhere, while doing this. Unfortunately, for obvious reasons such as the model being hired for a specific purpose, he did not have permission to publish, so they could only ever be shown at club meetings.

[Mata]

Thanks Mike.

The issue of what is the optimum size which preserves quality but not too big for any other use other than online.

I have been working on editing skills to process Fashion and Beauty photographs. I think they need a little bit more attention to detail but getting close to a professional standard.

Posted a few images below.

[Mike Farley]

The issue of what is the optimum size which preserves quality but not too big for any other use other than online.

I am not sure I understand this comment. You want to create a file with as many MP as possible so that you do not limit its subsequent utilisation. If you use Lightroom, it has an export function which has a varirty of options so that the image can be tailored to how it is going to be used. So you can produce a low res JPEG for web use and a high quality one for reproduction in a magazine from the same source, for example. It saves a lot of messing around in Photoshop and keeping multiple versions.

[davidc]

It's the balance between the size of the image and the jpg quality settings.

You can produce a 20mp image saved at the lowest jpg compression setting and it'll still look like garbage. Likewise you can save a 300x200 image at the best compression setting and it still looks good (albeit tiny).

Find the balance that suits you. Take into account the risk of your work being stolen - or lack thereof - vs the benefits of posting an image online that's appealing enough for people to want to look at & talk about. I find that images which are too small/low quality are just dismissed by those who take photography seriously and who you want to talk about images with. If the image is tiny or ruined with jpg compression it's hard to discuss it's merits without getting distracted by the technical errors. 1024x768 and quality level 10 is a good compromise IMO. The files are small, the images clean and the size OK for the the web and too small for any serious print journal to use.

[Mike Farley]

The Image File automatically sizes online images at, if I recall correctly, around 850 pixels for the longest edge as they reckon this is the optimum size to discourage unauthorised use. The images seem to load quite quickly, but as right clicking is disabled and I have not yet examined the JPEGs in my browser cache I have not yet worked out the likely quality setting. 850 pixels is on the large size for my taste and I prefer to stick to 768 pixels given the choice. In Lightroom I also limit the maximum file size to 150 KB as a further deterrent, which works reasonably well but can be a bit too low for some images. It comes down to how much information the JPEG compression discards during the initial phase of processing.

[Mata]

I suppose there isn’t a simple solution. Good quality point and shoot is all I want without using flash.

I am going to have two bodies at some stage, one with a fixed lens and other with a zoom , I don’t want to be lugging around a third heavy body camera in a studio setting as well. Something handy I can put in my pocket would be ideal.