No.Make.Up Portrait Steffi

After a very long – wait, toooooooooooo long – time I finally took a new photo session for my project 👉  No.Make.Up.Portrait. For the first time the photoshoot took place in Tallinn. I met Steffi already last year and we planned this for month, but for several reasons (or should I say life) it took us a while to find a date.

Raw and honest

Finally last Monday I got the chance to photograph Steffi and it was, like the other photoshoots for this project, absolutely amazing. We had really a good time and she was so natural in front of my camera. Her smile is totally contagious and she is such a beautiful woman. 

It is so fascinating to see, how the person in front of the camera acts and how this changes during the photoshoot. I always show the first good shots to my model on my camera display, so that they can get an idea of the final results. Of course, they are totally raw and nothing is edited, but this is not important. Or should I say, this is the point. This is exactly, what this project is about. Because afterwords I do not do any heavy retouching. The photos speak for themselves and that’s the idea. Steffi was already so happy after she looked at the first shots, that the rest of the photoshoot she got more and more comfortable in front of the camera.

With a little help from my lovely wife

As with the other photoshoots for this project my wife joined us. Not because I need an assistance to carry around my camera gear 😂. No no, she is a really good help in loosening up the model and distracting my model from the actual photoshoot. So I can be more of an observer, which gives me way more natural and real emotions and facial expressions. Is it more challenging to get a good shot, because they constantly talk? Hell yeah, but it is worth it! 🥰 And no, I do not use the continues mode for this, because my old Hasselblad do not have such fancy feature. And even with the new one I do not use it, because it would be too slow. But most important – I do not need this feature 😉

Editing

As mentioned before I do not do any retouch on the model. No skin smoothing, no shrinking or extending of body parts, nothing. I „only“ choose the look and feel of the black and white conversion, which is mostly all about light, shadow, contrast and grain. Like in an analog photography process, where you choose the film, developing and paper. While shooting I try to get the right detail, so that I do not have to crop the photos in the post process.

Retouching glasses and background

Wait – whaaaaaaat? And yes -this time I had to do some retouching on the glasses and the background. 😱 The spot where we took our first images was a black wall made out of big, metal tiles, which looks absolutely awesome. While taking the photos I liked the tiles of this wall. I thought, it was a nice detail for the background. But at the time I looked at the photos on my computer I realized, that for some close up shots these tiles are a too distracting. So I decided to erase them in some close up shots. False decisions on set leads to more work in post processing. Could I have avoid this? Oh yes, if only I had taken more time to think about this detail when I was there. So that’s on me 😅

Steffi’s glasses were a real challenge, which was nearly impossible to handle. They were so reflective that I couldn’t get any shot without a heavy reflection. She mentioned that right from the beginning and we both wanted to give it a try. But after a short while we decided to take them off in order to get better results. And that’s ok, because she doesn’t were them all the time. After reviewing my photos at home I selected some shots with glasses, because they are super cool. But I had to retouch the reflections, otherwise those photos weren’t usable.

Overall, I can still say, that these photos are totally natural and authentic. Because this is Steffi. Pure and beautiful.