Hairdressing Photography with Louise Chrystal

The first time Louise Chrystal and I worked together was years ago, on a shoot for a make up artist. Louise was styling the hair to compliment the make up looks. I instantly saw that she had an eye for what would and wouldn't work in camera. Since then we have kept in touch and finally we got the opportunity to plan a shoot.

Louise currently works freelance and was looking to produce some new images to use as promotional material to show a more creative side of her work. When we asked about the planning behind her shoot, she told us she was looking for photographers who specialise in hair photography, rather than general photographers who 'give it a go' with little knowledge of the hair industry or how to create a professional hair photograph.

Knowing that Louise had an early passion for architecture, I expected nothing less than a structured avant garde look. She delivered exactly that, and produced fantastic looking hair that I couldn't wait to wrap my lights around. This particular look was inspired by retro 80's pop culture with a contemporary up to date feel. The make up (by Margaret-Anne McKay) complimented this look perfectly with this seasons metallic hues.

Although the model has dark hair, we decided to photograph her against a dark charcoal background. Having worked with many hair models over the years, we know that lighter tones of backgrounds can wash out depth of colour within hair and can dull down highlights.

The model was shot against a charcoal wall in our studio. We placed a background light on the wall down low, creating a gradient effect from light to dark, we then used a blue gel over the top to tone the wall with a blue tint. We placed a snoot in from the left hand side of the shot. A blue gel was used on the snoot to create a highlight down the neck of the model, and to throw some blue highlights into the hair itself. This again, was to add to the 80's pop feel - the technique was used a lot in old school music videos as well as stills. A second snoot was positioned in from the right hand side to give the band of shine around the hair. These concentrated lighting techniques show off the over all structure of the hair style, and define the face from the background. The warmth from Nicole's natural skin tone was toned down in post production as a cooler skin tone worked better with the cold blue lighting effects.

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