Swanx Hair Lounge Shoot

We have been asked more questions about this image than any of the others we have taken in recent months, so we will give you the ins & outs of what we did to achive this final look. The model was Gia & the location was Swanx Hair Lounge in Scottsdale, AZ. We did a variety of shots that day at the salon and decided that putting Gia in the chair with the hair dryer behind her would make for a cool look. Lighting set up on this was fairly simple: One 5ft Photoflex octodome softbox coming in from camera right, and one light with a scoop (reflector) on it and a green gel attached to saturate the already-green wall. We shot from a variety of angles but this one seemed to work out the best with her leg extended towards the camera. The book worked out perfectly as it implies that she has little wardrobe on. Her glance to the left was authentic as we had her working with somebody off-camera. The skin tones are a result of shooting at a warmer color temperature (around 6500k) and then some editing in Photoshop. A new technique I like for skin is to duplicate the layer, run a slight diffuse glow on it and then fade the opacity to about 20% in luminosity mode (luminosity mode turns the skin back to a natural color)... this step makes the highlights, eyes & teeth 'pop' - then I merge the layers, duplicate the merged layer and run the surface blur on it at a high level, bring the opacity down to where I like it and then mask the layer to bring back areas of detail. There you have it! Profoto D4 Pack and Profoto Lights were used. Canon 1DsMkII & the Power Mac for processing & post-production. We hope this helps answer any questions anyone might have had about this image. We would love to hear your comments or feedback!
Tony & Char