Photography Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for professional, enthusiast and amateur photographers. It only takes a minute to sign up.
Sign up to join this community
I am a permanent make up artist. My work is good but I can’t take good photos of it. I use a ring light and iPhone.
The result has no much details always orange or red tones
I see international artists post their work like this .. how can I do the same?
Do I need a camera instead of phone camera?
Do I need more light in my room?
Do I need to send my photos to a retoucher?
You could possibly get away with a phone & ringlight to get something basic. A solitary ringlight isn't going to be quite the same as a full studio setup, but it can at least provide a broad light that works well for this type of shot. In fact, I'd go so far as to say your lighting isn't really the issue at all in your photo. It's basic but it's fine for the task. Could have been placed slightly better, your model is looking slightly up toward it, but it's still too high. Try to emulate how the catchlight [the reflection of the light in the eyes] is done in your first example.
What you have to bear in mind that the model in the first picture probably had whatever treatment they're selling done at least the day before, then spent an hour or two in make-up before the photo session.
They weren't just snapped right after, laid down with the blood rushing to their head, redness around the treatment area & a gentle sheen of perspiration.
Your model in the second photo didn't have a chance.
Putting them against a better background, &/or using the 'cheat' Portrait mode phones have these days to artificially blur the background & even up the lighting for you probably wouldn't hurt either.
if you have one of the iPhones from the 'posh' end of the line-up with multiple lenses, use the longer lens, which will force you to stand further back. That will lessen that selfie effect of 'big nose, little ears' that a wide lens will give you. If you have only a single lens, then you could try standing further back, which will give exactly the same end result, but you'll have to crop your image to properly see it in the same way, which might make it too pixellated. You'd have to strike a balance.
A dedicated point and shoot camera with optical zoom will take better portraits and allow better framing and composition than the rather wide angle lens on most phones.
When using a ring light, keep the room dark to erase the background, ensure correctable color, and avoid shadows.
I'm not sure what a retoucher does, but there's a lot you can tweak in post that make the bottom shot look more like the top shot:
Steps include:
It looks like lens-mounted macro flash unit, something like this.
Combined with other illumination techniques you can play with the shadows to be sharp or smooth as intended.
