Beauty retouched with Photoshop

Here is a before and after retouched beauty portrait done on Photoshop

I'll post more exemples

Close up

I've got a PEEK on my site. Falow up !

 Alright !
It took me a bit more time that I though to correct my website and send an other request to PEEK to review my site.
But totally worth it !!!
So to conclude it. If you have professional site. Do it. It's free and help you to improve it. Period !!!
http://peek.usertesting.com
Here is my last review
http://peek.usertesting.com/result/3423478885241?autoplay=true

I've got a PEEK on my site.

I'm always wondering what is the first impression of the people when they're going on my site for the first time. Then I find out about PEEK http://peek.usertesting.com/
It's a service that ask randomly a person to go on your website and give a recording of their first impression.
It's super easy to do, Just give your website address and email and it's FREE...

So I gave a try. I took a couple days for the PEEK video to be emailed to me.
At first it was pretty frustrating since the person I've got didn't know how to scroll on my site and barely saw anything of my work. So made some judgment on the 10% visible to her.
So I didn't know if is it something that most of the people that goes on my site had difficulty with and I should address it immediately or it was just that visitor...
Here is the link of the video: http://peek.usertesting.com/result/637564103140?autoplay=true

Then I asked around and it turned out that it was an issue and some people had trouble to figure out the lateral scrolling on my site to view the rest of the photos.

So the next 2 days I redesigned my site. here it's how it looks now. http://www.fredericphotography.com

Since they allowed 3 Free PEEKs per month. I sent an other request a couple days ago. Should come anytime soon. I'll do an update as soon as I get the video.

I think that anyone who has an professional website should do it. You don't always know who goes to your website and what are their purpose. But a percentage of them are visiting it for some interest of maybe hiring your services and maybe few are leaving your pages because they cannot figure out how to navigate...

Give it some thought, give it a try and let me know your experience.

PRE TO POST with ADRIANNA COSTA from EXTRA TV

For the breast cancer awareness month. I shot an editorial fashion spread with TV host Adrianna Costa from "EXTRA TV" for FCM magazine.

The theme was pink (color of the ribbon for Breast Cancer Awareness).

Fortunately for  this shoot I had some time to plan and prepare.
So I story-boarded the main shots I visualized.

Then I thought you would be interested to see what I planned and what end up to be shot and  published.

I wanted to open the editorial story with a double page. So the day of the shoot I decided to make this concept horizontal.

For this concept I though painting the ribbon on the background would be a nice touch. Not subtle though !

 This Concept made the cover.

Adrianna Costa was a fantastic model to work with.
despite an eye infection. She was very professional. Came on time and had a lovely and up keeping personality.
We all fell in love with her...


Photographer: Frederic Charpentier ©
Stylist: Gus Castaneda
Stylist Assistant: Teressa Foglia
Hair Stylist: Ryan Burrell
Make up: Gus Castadena

For strobist:
One Profoto 600R with a 7 feet parabolic silver umbrella behind me, the center of the strobe been up to 8 feet and a bit to my left.

FLASHPOINT 86in PARABOLIC SILVER UMBRELLA first test

I bought an 86in parabolic silver umbrella a couple months ago. Here are the details of when I received it.

I got it because I was planning a shoot with a specific look. My plan was to have the models against the wall or close enough to leave a shadow for a dimension appearance.

I wanted a strait on light source, very sharp on the model to give a dynamism on the very colorful shoot that I had in mind. One of the challenges was the shadow, I didn't want it to be too strong and over power the models.

At the time I had 3 different light sources to choose from, but all fell short of getting me the look I wanted.

-1- A soft-box: it would have left a soft and discrete shadow on the wall but too soft on the models.

-2- A 7in reflector: This would have produced a nice dynamic sharp light on the models but it would leave a too pronounced shadow on the wall. Also the light beam would have been too narrow and cause too much falloff in full body shots.

-3- A ring-flash: I like the look it would have done on the models but not sure that the hallow shadow around the models would have given the dynamic feeling I was looking for.

After much research, it was clear that to get the look I wanted, I had to use a huge parabolic umbrella. The one from Profoto is too expensive. So I took my chances with this $70 parabolic umbrella from Flashpoint.

This was my very first time shooting with the it.
I hadn't even done a test prior to this shoot.
But thank god I got the results I wanted at a great price.




In this photo you can clearly see the details of the shadow but still very soft.


In this shot you can see how direct the light on Maya is. Uniform head to toe.
It makes her skin and the satin outfit almost luminescent with pronounced shadows.


I'll do a more detail review later on.

CHANGING THE BACKGROUND IN PHOTOSHOP (CS4, CS5)

- Select the background
- Create a color fill layer (CS4 and CS5)
- change the layer from normal to overlay
- Choose the color you like
- Zoom to at least 100%
- Select the mask window in the color fill layer
- Select the brush tool
- Make sure that all the edges are perfect. White to add and black to subtract
- Et Voila

GO-GO GIRLS ligth set up

Nikon D300+35-70mm3.3-4.5D, 1/200s, F/5.6 , ISO 100
2 Profotos 600R and 1 Novatron 400 for the background

Model: Amber Terry

Frederic Charpentier ©