Test shoot for perfect skin.

Here are some images from a test shoot I have done in order to see what lighting I would need for my final images.

The theme of this shoot was to concentrate solely on the skin and how to perfect the skin. Therefore I decided to stick with minimal makeup on the eyes, simply making them look bronzed. The same theory applied to the lips, I decided to go with a nude colour to keep the focus on the highlighted elements of the face. (This being the cheekbones, bridge of the nose, the brow bone and slightly above the brow)
The styling of the hair for this shoot again was very minimal and natural. The model had a natural wave which I decided to keep and simply spray the hair lightly with hairspray for added volume. Half way through the shoot I felt that the hair was not particularly working for this look, I think it was how it was looking at the roots, the undone feeling wasn't working as well as I thought it would have. Therefore I decided I would tie the hair up, this way I felt you could see the structure of the face more, in particular the models jaw line.

In terms of what I thought was successful with this shoot I feel that the lighting was good. I was able to focus the camera lense to the areas of the face that I desired. I feel the makeup was successful in these shots, the skin looks almost perfect and I love the way the highlighter has shown up on camera. The next time I have a shoot like this for the skin elements of my blog I believe I will set up the camera and lights in exactly the same nature to once again achieve this effect.

In terms of what I thought was not successful with this shoot would be the styling of the model in terms of the clothes and hair. Next time I shoot I will make the model wear a boob tube type top and make sure no straps can be visible in the shot, as this I felt distracted from the overall theme of the image as it essentially cut through the skin. Seeing as this was a shoot focusing on the skin I feel that the image would look much more polished and professional if the skin was a blank canvas against the background with nothing on it. With the hair I feel it would be better to style it in a sleek pony tail as this will again give an overall polished look, and this will not distract the eye from the face and bone structure. If I decide to re-style the hair through the shoot and have it down, I will brush the hair away from the face and spray it back so that the hair is still sleek looking.
With the makeup for my next shoot I will aim to have a bolder lip as this will give the image a little edge instead of the whole image being from the same colour palette, as this may bore the viewer a little. I think this might be able to be achieved with a different background. This is something I aim to play with on my next shoot to capture the perfect editorial images.
Another reason I feel this image was not as successful as I hoped and therefore would not make it into my final images, is because I didn't really feel anything when looking at the image. I feel the poses were bland and didn't excite me. I felt when looking at the images, yes the skin was nice looking, but it lacked something and I constantly felt like something was missing in the image.
In terms of posing I will ask my next model to pose more as this I feel will make the image stand out instead of simply looking like a nice beauty shot.