Today I will tell you a little bit more about one of my oldest, yet still one of the most successful pictures I made in the begining of my photographic career - picture of Manuela.
First thing I need to say: I was very lucky, as the begginner. At that time I used to cooperate with great people - make-up artist Jovanka and stylist who always took care about all shooting organisation, Marcin Urzędowski. My model, a real professional, wrote to me by herself, so imagine what a compliment, such model wants to work with me! And she came to Cracow for especially for me!
To be honest I wasn't experienced in studio back then. I don't think I ever did any studio shooting at that time. Fortunately we had our home made ring flash with continuos lighting - few strong light bulbs attached to ... metal circle taken from the drum. Yes, the drum. It's still one of my favourites lights, very soft, allowing to do close, climatic portraits. It affects white balance (it's very worm type of light), so you need to work on it during post production. And it's hard to make a full body shot with this type of light, even though my ring is very big.
As a background we used a patterned piece of material found in one of locals second hand shops (there are lots of them in Cracow, especially in Nowa Huta area where I used to live, and they are all extremelly cheap!). First we shot outside, it was February, so cold made us to go back inside, but both of us - the model and me, were wormed up to shoot. We did a lot of portraits, I used to have few in my portfolio, but this one was always best and finally - still is.
Editing wasn't strong. I retouched skin, which is always basic, I've changed white balance, and after some time in second retuch I played a little with colour toning. You probably know, if you've seen my pictures, that I am a big fan of cold tonning. Last thing - I shot with Sony camera, Alpha200 with Minolta 50/1,7 lens.
This is basically all.
model: Manuela Hussein
make-up & hair: Jovanka
stylist: Marcin Urzędowski
You can find polish version on
Polish Photographers Club website.
