1920's Style Photograph

We were asked recently to produce an image with a very different kind of feel. The brief was for a 1920's style, with an up to date, fresh feel. The hairstylist producing the hair and headpiece was Louise Chrystal. She layered up the floral head pieces and created a shape similar to that of a traditional synchronised swimming cap, typical of the era we were aiming for. The different size and texture of the hair pieces added great shape and tonal value to the over all feel. We initially began setting up the studio as you would for a standard white background shoot.

Red gels were added on either side of the back lights. Initially these created a deep red, not what we were looking for, but it made for a funny test shot - this is Kyle at his best!

After a few tweaks we matched the tone nicely with the models skin tone and generated a lovely peachy/pink tone. The background could have been dropped in later in post production, but when working on a shoot like this, we aim to get the photographs as close to the brief as possible in camera.

Traditionally, make-up of this era was quite heavy and chalky. We asked the Make Up Artist Margaret-Anne to use an old English rose colour palette but with a fresher dewy finish instead. The rose pink cheeks and pale undertones work really well with the over all style of the image. Everything came together nicely.
I converted the file and only did a very small amount of post production. Whilst initially we were happy with the way the image was shot in camera, when I had processed it, I thought that perhaps it would look better desaturated to produce a more vintage tone.

The Saturated Image

This is the original photograph as it was shot to let you see the lighting techniques and the balance between the  background and the model.

The Final Image

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