Beautiful Makeup Photos Made Easy (Gallery)
The biggest issue for me has been trying to figure out how to take decent pictures of my makeup, and almost every picture has turned out horribly. I have learned some tricks, mostly those that include the right lighting. For me this was a big one.
Lighting is in most cases the key and it can even be more important that the makeup itself.
With natural light, I usually use manual that way I can get more control over the overall way the lighting looks.
The thing I need to play the most with is the ISO setting, too low means that the photo comes out too dark, too high means that the photo comes out too light with more noise. When there’s not enough natural light to go by I use the ‘portrait’ setting which automatically uses flash. I personally don’t really like using flash because for some reason I can’t really keep my eyes open and I end up looking like I was just about to blink. :p
Also, try and tilt your head towards the light.
Photograph with the light, not against it. So if the light comes out of the window, stand as if you’re going to look outside and then point the camera towards you. Photos tend to turn out much nicer when you’re well lit!
Another tip on getting nice even natural light for portraits: hang a thin white sheet over the window if it’s really sunny outside, as it’ll help diffuse the light a bit and spread it more evenly over your face, avoiding harsh shadows.
This is much cheaper than buying a reflector.
If your camera has an exposure bracketing option, use that too. What it does it that it will take three or more photos at different exposures when you take your photo, so you can compare and pick the best one.
It helps if you have a mirror in front of you so that you can see if you’re actually in frame or not. What also helps is taking a few photos, looking at it and deciding if you should move around a bit.
It also helps to zoom out the camera as much as possible, so that it’s much more likely that you’re in frame. You can always crop the picture later to just show the area you want.
And like I said in the tutorial, don’t be afraid to make ugly pictures! If you’re relaxed about it, there’s a much higher chance a photo will come out just right.
Thanks to the lovely hannypoppie for sharing these photos!