Demi Fotografia

March, 26th 2013 A few weeks ago I decided to shoot a fragrance...

Tue, 26 Mar 2013 12:32:39 -0700

March, 26^th 2013

A few weeks ago I decided to shoot a fragrance campaign for L’eau De Chloe, by Chloe, which I went ahead and shot yesterday afternoon. I used one of my favorite models, Carle P. because she works so well wit props and easily communicates what you want into the photograph. I have worked with her many times so its becoming easier and easier to get the looks I want out of her.

I chose this Chloe perfume because It has an edgy side to it if you’re a fan of Chloe – You’ll know what I’m talking about-but by using window light I softened her look. I also rented the Giant Door Prop at Mason Street Studios for the background. I Dressed her in a simple tank top and a lacy bra to keep everything soft ad innocent but sexy.

Between her striking eyes and soft skin I feel that I got exactly what I wanted out of this shoot. The composite will be posted soon!

Until next time.

Demi Ward

March, 12th I made a conscious effort to work outside my comfort zone this last weekend and work...

Tue, 12 Mar 2013 08:51:01 -0700

March, 12^th

I made a conscious effort to work outside my comfort zone this last weekend and work with colored gelled light. I have always kept my work in the safe-zone of playing with color so I have a lot of room to play in Photoshop. Yet, what I have realized is that I (in many ways) am an in-camera cropper sand lighter.
I don’t like to do too much post work on my images. Maybe its because I know that you can do damage to your image by adjusting things to much, but playing with colored light this shoot was a big step towards a more edgy-style of photography that I ‘m looking forward to.

I have to many inspirations who work with colored light all the time.

So I chose blue.

I worked with a favorite model of mine, Lizette Sanchez and Kat Ty MUA to get the look and mood I was going for. In the RAW of the image – My 24-105 lens as given her face a little distortion. I’m usually a fan of this distortion but because I was shooting from below and she was turning her jaw up words me, I wanted to tone down how much room her jaw took up in the frame.

Here’s a tip for you when it comes to manipulating the shape of things in your images:

I know that in the retouching world, liquefying categorized as a retouchers last resort. Liquefying damages information in the pixels and if you don’t know what your doing, can be a terrible tool to use on your work.

1- Try Using the Warp tool: You take the Marquee tool or the Lasso tool and select the entire area of which you would like to manipulate. Press Command – T – and right click (Control Click on a Mac) – Command J (To bring your selection to a new layer – Command T (to Transform your selection – Right Click (Control Click) – Warp

2- Try using the Lens Correction feature:

- Filter, Lens Correction… - Custom – and play with the different sliders on the right-hand side until you get what you want.

Both are great tools to help you achieve vision you intended.

For this photo, I was inspired by my new understanding of the NAHA Awards.

Check it out – its incredible.

http://www.probeauty.org/nahagallery/

One of the salons that have taken home a lot of awards started out in my home town of Salt Lake City: Lunatic Fringe Salon.

http://www.probeauty.org/nahagallery/?category=ST&id=1473

Until next week,

Demi Ward

March, 4th These last two weeks have been crazy busy. Between...

Tue, 05 Mar 2013 11:46:53 -0800

March, 4^th

These last two weeks have been crazy busy. Between shooting product, retouching my own images and working with a professional retoucher I have had barely any free time to come up with new and upcoming shoots.

I talked about my Estee Lauder shoot with Liz S. in February and now I’ve retouched the image for myself as well as testing with a professional retoucher. If you haven’t done this before let me give you a snapshot of how it all works.

I take the Raw file into Photoshop and bring a new blank layer on top and use a white or black brush (something that is easy to see) and circle the areas I want retouched and mention what it is I want fixed about it. A lot of stuff is obvious but if you want something liquefied or color balanced – make sure to mention that.

Save the file as a layered PSD or TIFF ad send if off!

Weather you need personally or you spend 20-50 min send the full-resolution files VIA www.wettransfer.com

They receive an email asking if they wish to download the file to their computer and then they can receive the full-res file when normal email such as Gmail or Yahoo will not let you send that size file.

My reatoucher gave me ann estimate of how much time it would take ad then communicated back and forth via email with screen grabs of what I wanted fixed further and what he had questions about until we met the same goal of meeting my vision.

I am so happy with the over-all result and I am looking forward to working with a professional retoucher again!

Here is the final image:

Let me know what you guy’s think!

Demi Ward

February 19th

Tue, 05 Mar 2013 11:30:11 -0800

Over the weekend I shot Model Lizette S. and shot with my favorite makeup artist Kathleen TY. Liz is new and upcoming in the modeling world and was suggested to me by my makeup artist who has a lot of experience and said that the girl would be great for my style and what I like to do. I am advertising for Estee Lauder Face Bronzing and Sunscreen. My concept was to do something really warm ad natural. I asked Kathleen to really make her hair shine.

I’m a big fan of the dewy – sweaty looking cheeks and eyelids BUT:

Here’s a tip: Make sure that If you want to use that effect and you tell your makeup artist – remind them not to use shimmer to get this effect. - Shimmer in photographs can a lot of times leave a visual affect of corrupted pixels. Shimmer works great in video but not so well in digital imaging. So let her know not to use shimmer. Your makeup artist will use an alternative (Vaseline, etc.).

As soon as I met the model, I looked at the quality of her skin. It was really good – so in the beginning I planned on using hard light. As soon as I put Liz in front of the camera I knew what I wanted. I threw a beauty dish on my lights and brought in my silver fill in to fill the right side of her face (camera left).

I always start by giving a new model I haven’t worked with a few props to play with and play some upbeat music. Liz loosened up and before I knew it we were getting exactly what I wanted out of the shoot.

I am planning on working with a professional retoucher for this assignment so we’ll see what happens!

Until next week!

Demi Ward

Feb. 7th 2013 So I’m committed now. My first product and beauty...

Thu, 07 Feb 2013 01:33:00 -0800

Feb. 7^th 2013

So I’m committed now. My first product and beauty shot are shot, edited, retouched and sketched. Sketched? That’s a new one.

Let me explain:

I chose Stila, a young, fresh youthful brand to shoot for.

Stila’s brand can be really girly, but I love the use of hard lighting mixed with frothy styling and playful mood they play with and support their brand with in advertisements.

As I talked a little about in my last blog, I am planning on shooting cosmetics that go along with each glamour shot, just so they can be cohesive. I shoot so I can do a vertical billboard-style-horizontal frame where I can Photoshop the product in the corner of the horizontal advertisement; then I also and primarily shoot with the intention of a double page spread – The product as one vertical image and conceptual beauty shot on the other. It Is very important to me tat every shoot has a cohesive and complete ending to it. Everything needs to make sense or tie together in some way in the end.

I tend to shoot the essence, model shot first because in my eyes shooting the model on set, there are a lot more “uncontrolled variables” and things that get lost or are added last minute because your shooting in a small time frame with people. After I have shot that and chose the frames I want to go with, I then shoot the product.

I like to print out color palettes to keep in mind not only the look of my portfolio, to make sure it’s cohesive, but that the Product can be cohesive with the makeup.

You can do this at http://www.colourlovers.com/palettes

My beauty shot model was shot with a beauty dish, reflector, and a hair light. Also, my background was a white background with blue gells on the two reflecting umbrellas. On this shoot, had a lot of trouble with getting the background light’s to pop with the PocketWizards, does anyone have any suggestions on how to make them more affective at seeing one and other?

Jenna, my model was amazing. She has a very commercial look when she smiles, that was the original intention when I booked her with L.A.Models, but after a few minutes together I fell in love with her serious side.

For the product I decided on Stila’s Stay-all-day Foundation and Concealer.

If any of you are wondering how I did the sketch and watercolor-looking effect on my photos:

After drawing the hair and hand on a separate blank layer, I downloaded watercolor brushes for free at:
http://www.brusheezy.com/brushes/1792-free-hi-res-watercolor-photoshop-brushes

Then, I played with different opacity’s painting, (10%, 20% 40%) erasing as well and making new strokes on the layer until I felt that the watercolor was convincing.

Then I grouped those layers, erased the white background where I felt like its unnecessary to the point of my drawing, and dropped it on the image.

Hope that your enjoying my work and processes!

Until next week,

Demi

©Demi Ward Monday, January 2013 This last weekend I decided to...

Tue, 29 Jan 2013 12:57:03 -0800

©Demi Ward

Monday, January 2013

This last weekend I decided to work on some beauty/glamour stuff in Santa Barbara. I was looking through my favorite work just this last week and came up with an idea for my portfolio. I would bleed into a couple new genre’s. Currently, I am enrolled in Advanced Tabletop and I am hooting a lot of cosmetics under extremely controlled lighting environments.

Lately, getting really interested in swinging away from my fashion work for a little while and working on doing Beauty Glamour stuff to match the products I have been shooting lately. This is the beginning of a whole new genre of my work. advertising.

I was fortunate enough to have an instructor if my and Brooks Institute work with me in the studio this last weekend and bring in Pinkerton model, Christina. Also, to join the crew on set was talented makeup artist Erin LeBre. Christina’s look was a very clean one but with accents of warm coppers and browns. I played around a little bit in pre-production with her lipstick being gold and purple and I think it worked well for the look I was going for to match the Nars product I plan to pair with the Beauty shoot.

Here are a two of the looks from this weekend’s shoots: Enjoy and make sure to give feedback!

Until next week,

Demi Ward

California Winter Video Look Book (Women's)

Mon, 14 Jan 2013 20:58:10 -0800

California Winter Video Look Book (Women's):

A Women’s Video Look-Book advertising for the popular style of clothing warn during winter in California.

Produced, Edited, and Shot by myself and Augusta Sagnelli

Model: Jenna Phillips

©Demi Ward 2013

@Augusta Sagnelli 2013

©Demi Ward-2012 Haute Couture-Paris

Tue, 10 Jul 2012 03:34:22 -0700

©Demi Ward-2012

Haute Couture-Paris

©Demi Ward-2012 Haute Couture-Paris

Tue, 10 Jul 2012 03:34:03 -0700

©Demi Ward-2012

Haute Couture-Paris

Tue, 10 Jul 2012 03:33:42 -0700

Haute Couture-Paris

Tue, 10 Jul 2012 03:33:20 -0700

Haute Couture-Paris

Tue, 10 Jul 2012 03:32:57 -0700

Haute Couture-Paris

Tue, 10 Jul 2012 03:32:39 -0700

Haute Couture-Paris

Tue, 10 Jul 2012 03:32:20 -0700

Haute Couture-Paris

Tue, 10 Jul 2012 03:31:59 -0700

Haute Couture-Paris

Tue, 10 Jul 2012 03:31:39 -0700

Haute Couture-Paris

Tue, 10 Jul 2012 03:30:00 -0700

Haute Couture-Paris

Tue, 10 Jul 2012 03:21:19 -0700

Fashion Week-Paris

Tue, 10 Jul 2012 03:20:35 -0700

Fashion Week-Paris

Tue, 10 Jul 2012 03:19:56 -0700

Fashion Week-Paris

Demi Fotografia

March, 26th 2013 A few weeks ago I decided to shoot a fragrance...

March, 12th I made a conscious effort to work outside my comfort zone this last weekend and work...

March, 4th These last two weeks have been crazy busy. Between...

February 19th

Feb. 7th 2013 So I’m committed now. My first product and beauty...

©Demi Ward Monday, January 2013 This last weekend I decided to...

California Winter Video Look Book (Women's)

©Demi Ward-2012 Haute Couture-Paris

©Demi Ward-2012 Haute Couture-Paris

©Demi Ward-2012 Haute Couture-Paris

©Demi Ward-2012 Haute Couture-Paris

©Demi Ward-2012 Haute Couture-Paris

©Demi Ward-2012 Haute Couture-Paris

©Demi Ward-2012 Haute Couture-Paris

©Demi Ward-2012 Haute Couture-Paris

©Demi Ward-2012 Haute Couture-Paris

©Demi Ward-2012 Haute Couture-Paris

©Demi Ward-2012 Fashion Week-Paris

©Demi Ward-2012 Fashion Week-Paris

©Demi Ward-2012 Fashion Week-Paris