Testing The Lighting For My Adverts

In our photography lesson this week I wanted to test out what kind of lighting would work best for my advert. I want strong lighing as I believe it would bring out the features, and I want te viewer to really notice what the advert it about, even without seeing the product.

One advert is for the NARS Hot Sand Multiple Stick and the other is for their Audacious Lipstick in VIP Red


I showed Simon this image below, which is from their Audacious Fall 2015 campaign and he recomended the beauty dish. Also, as I wanted black background, he said that it would be best that I do it in a booth as it blocks any other lighting. 

Nars Advert for Audacious Mascara and Kohliner

Fall 2015
Photographer: F. Nars

(source: http://beautystat.com/site/makeup/review-nars-audacious-mascara-and-kohliner-fall-2015-collection/

Accessed: Jan 31 2016)

First few images I took (first- fourth image) were taken with the beauty dish in the level of my model's eyes. I had her faced to the side as at first I was having the 'highlight shot' in mind, but then I realized that I wasn't getting enough shadow. I switched the models as the other model had more accentuated cheekbones. 
I knew that for the lipstick I want the light not to be too high up, so placed the light slightly above the level of my model's eyes (fifth image). Looking at the image now, if I zoom in and stand right under the light when taking photos, this would work great. Then I asked her to face slightly to the side so that her cheekbone can catch the light (sixth image). And it did perfectly, however the lighting was to cool, so I changed it in the settings to get a much warmer tone (sixth - tenth image) which looked a lot lot better.

First Image

Second Image

Third Image

Fourth Image

Model: Sophie Sommers

Fifth Image

Sixth Image

Seventh Image

Eigth Image

Ninth Image

Tenth Image

Model: Jazmine Collins

(Images taken on: Mar 7 2016)

So today I managed to find the lighting and angle I want to use for my advert. I will be using the beauty dish and have it slightly above the level of my model's eye for the lipstick advert, and for the highlight I will have it higher up. I was originally going to use black background but I decided to have Beth as my advert model as I think the warm, gold toned highlighter would look amazing on her. NARS are all about diversity and using different models and not the 'standard' or 'basic' ones, so I will use a model with dark skin tone. This means that I will have a range of skin tones throughout my project - the editorial will have a tanned model and the catwalk a paler one. However, in my advert, the black background and shadows will probably be too much so I need to do some test shots with Beth and see how it looks like with white background. We don't have a specific day set for the test shoot yet, I asked and she said she will let me know, but it will most likely be sometime next week (week 8).