Teenage 'Glamour Party'

vangogh · February 14, 2007

I've been asked to do a Glamour Party for a teenage girl who will be 14. Just a few shots of each girl with different outfits and a bit of make up etc. I have a small Portaflash setup and an Olympus E500. The father has suggested maybe that they can get a print after and I suggested the possibility of a makeup artist.

Can anyone offer any tips? Or any contact details of make up artists in the West London area who wouldn't charge the earth? And talking of charging the earth, any suggestions as to what sort of price (in £££s) would be suitable? Obviously the father is looking for a reasonable price.

Nicola

DoctorIt · February 14, 2007

Nicola - wide array of questions, definitely the wrong spot for them. This is the shots forum, people are looking for just that. But I don't know where to move you, because you want help with both technique and business.

thanks for making my morning hard!

edit: I made up my mind - you're off to business, where more people will see your questions about pricing/makeup artists/etc (feel free to post again in technique for specific stuff on glamour shots

)

urbanaries · February 14, 2007

vangogh wrote:

Can anyone offer any tips? Or any contact details of make up artists in the West London area who wouldn't charge the earth? And talking of charging the earth, any suggestions as to what sort of price (in £££s) would be suitable? Obviously the father is looking for a reasonable price.

Nicola

What a creative idea! I don't have specific suggestions for you. But I wonder if a local beauty college would be full of prospective MAs for you, who might be willing to trade their time for photography of their work...just a thought!

vangogh · February 14, 2007

urbanaries wrote:

What a creative idea! I don't have specific suggestions for you. But I wonder if a local beauty college would be full of prospective MAs for you, who might be willing to trade their time for photography of their work...just a thought!

DoctorIT sorry I caused you a heavy morning!! lol wasn't sure where to post lol

urbanaries: thats a very good idea, txs for that. Theres a stage school near me, they would probably have MAs

Sam · February 14, 2007

urbanaries wrote:

What a creative idea! I don't have specific suggestions for you. But I wonder if a local beauty college would be full of prospective MAs for you, who might be willing to trade their time for photography of their work...just a thought!

Great thought!!!

I will remember this. Well assuming the brain cells don't dteriorate too fast.:D

Sam

Art Scott · February 14, 2007

vangogh wrote:

DoctorIT sorry I caused you a heavy morning!! lol wasn't sure where to post lol

urbanaries: thats a very good idea, txs for that. Theres a stage school near me, they would probably have MAs

Yes a stage or drama school.....the opera departments of any fine arts college should have classes in make-up and talking with the students should get you one that is ready to do what you want...look for an upperclass person.

Nikolai · February 14, 2007

Nicola,

vangogh wrote:

I've been asked to do a Glamour Party for a teenage girl who will be 14. Just a few shots of each girl with different outfits and a bit of make up etc. I have a small Portaflash setup and an Olympus E500. The father has suggested maybe that they can get a print after and I suggested the possibility of a makeup artist.

Can anyone offer any tips? Or any contact details of make up artists in the West London area who wouldn't charge the earth? And talking of charging the earth, any suggestions as to what sort of price (in £££s) would be suitable? Obviously the father is looking for a reasonable price.

Nicola

I did it several times, it's a fun event.:-)

1. You don't need a MUA. Teenage girls these days are very well skilled with makeup, and since there will be several of them, they'll do each other. Remember Tom Soyer and his fence. Make it fun, not work, and people line up to do it.

2. All you need is a decent size room, some backdrop, some props (chairs, stools, etc.) drapes and, most importantly, good studio type lighting. Of course, larger space is better (you can use longer lens), but I was able to do it in a plain common room (granted, it has a very high ceiling) turned into studio by removing some extra furniture.

3. Price wise - it's entirely up to you, sorry. SoCal is not London, can't advise. It also depends on your relationships with the families, etc. The "divide and conquer" method, when you figure the bottom price by doing binary iterations worked well for me in the past.

HTH

vangogh · February 25, 2007

Hi

The 'Glamour' party went fantastically, but I'm exhausted! 9 teenage girls is a lot to handle

The girls loved it, having the make up & then posing for their pics. The MUA I used had just come from doing the Brits party so they were in awe of her. I got some fantastic shots but I now have to PP 3.5gb of raws images! When I've got some online I'll post a few.

I think its definitely something I want to do again :ivar

Nicola

Scott_Quier · March 1, 2007

vangogh wrote:

Hi

The 'Glamour' party went fantastically, but I'm exhausted! 9 teenage girls is a lot to handle The girls loved it, having the make up & then posing for their pics. The MUA I used had just come from doing the Brits party so they were in awe of her. I got some fantastic shots but I now have to PP 3.5gb of raws images! When I've got some online I'll post a few.

I think its definitely something I want to do again :ivar

Nicola

Congrats on the fun shoot! I sure would have loved to have been a fly on the wall for that one - such fun!

RE: the 3.5Gb. Unless they are ALL keepers, this should go fairly fast. Remember, ACR is your friend. Cull the bad/dups then do most of your gross corrections in batches. Since you were shooting with a studio set up, the color temperature should be pretty constant and that makes it much easier.

After the batching, you can correct/modify tilt, crop, etc also in ACR.

Now import those that need additional fine tuning it into to PS.

Should be able to, I would think, get to the final JPGs in 3 - 5 hours.

I use a process similar to this when working wedding shots, where I have something between 8 and 14 GB of RAW. Of course, I have to spread it out over a couple of days and the light is not constant, but it's still not too bad.

Hope this helps some.

vangogh · March 16, 2007

Scott_Quier wrote:

Remember, ACR is your friend..... get to the final JPGs in 3 - 5 hours.

Thanks for this Scott! I'm going to sound really ignorant now, but what is ACR? & Where can I get it? jpegs in 3-5 hours sounds fantastic, as I have another load of pics to process from my trip to Pakistan, plus other stuff.

dogwood · March 16, 2007

vangogh wrote:

I think its definitely something I want to do again :ivar

In that case, the MUA is your best friend forever. Keep him/her happy and keep in touch with them. If you end up doing more work like this, a quality MUA is one of your most important assets-- especially since they are so closely closely interacting with your clients and for all intents and purposes, become an extention of your photography.

Scott_Quier · March 17, 2007

vangogh wrote:

Thanks for this Scott! I'm going to sound really ignorant now, but what is ACR? & Where can I get it? jpegs in 3-5 hours sounds fantastic, as I have another load of pics to process from my trip to Pakistan, plus other stuff.

ACR - Adobe Camera Raw. You can do a lot of basic PP (white balance, contract, saturation, noise reduction, brightness, vignette, exposure, black point, cropping, sharpening, etc) in batches. When you get all that done, turn ACR loose to generate the JPGS.

Of course, you can't do things like retouching in ACR, but your subjects look perfect and don't need it right?

Nimai · March 17, 2007

I would have thought someone would have recommended [thread=51034]i2e[/thread] here, for the batch RAW conversion? I haven't used it yet - I just got it last night.
I shot candids at a party for a bunch of teenage girls at a nail salon -

Pretty exhausting! I should have never let them know that they could see the pictures in the LCD... They're never satisfied with how they look!

Scott_Quier · March 18, 2007

Nimai wrote:

I would have thought someone would have recommended [thread=51034]i2e[/thread] here, for the batch RAW conversion? I haven't used it yet - I just got it last night.
I shot candids at a party for a bunch of teenage girls at a nail salon -
Pretty exhausting! I should have never let them know that they could see the pictures in the LCD... They're never satisfied with how they look!

I don't yet have I2E, so can't recommend it. However, if it lives up to it's promises, then it will server just as well or better.

dogwood · March 18, 2007

Nimai wrote:

Pretty exhausting! I should have never let them know that they could see the pictures in the LCD... They're never satisfied with how they look!

Little off the original post/topic, but I've heard of celebrity photographers who still use film for just this reason-- so they can get on with the shoot rather than haggle over every shot and how the subject looks!

I usually show the model a few images at the beginning, or if something obviously isn't working out so they can see. Other than that, I just tell them it disrupts the flow/mood of the shoot too much. When it's done, I might show them a successful shot or two as well. Luckily, the 1D I normally shoot with isn't all that easy to view photos (it requires two hands, for one) so I just explain that and most people are satisfied.

bratsscrappy · March 23, 2007

more info
if you look at my website www.coastalimpressionsphotography.com and the glamour section those were all done single light, the key is a big softbox, the bigger the better.

vangogh · March 23, 2007

bratsscrappy wrote:

if you look at my website www.coastalimpressionsphotography.com and the glamour section those were all done single light, the key is a big softbox, the bigger the better.

Thanks for that. I used 2 white umbrellas, one on each side and a white reflector for fill when needed (getting some of the girls to help me :-) ). I've finished PPing the pics (thanks Scott for the info about ACR - reduced my PP time down to a day! Started at 8am & ppd thru none stop till about 5pm!). The family LOVE the pics and are very happy to refer me to others which is fantastic. I will ask permission to put a few of the pics up so you can all see the results. Being 14 year olds I don't want to put up pics without their permission.

Nicola

Teenage 'Glamour Party'

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