pro shooter here

[Shannon Fontaine]

Hello All,

I am a professional photographer from the great city of Nashville, Tennessee (full time shooter these last eight years) who has been avidly reading and absorbing the great information on this site for quite some time.

Great info here and no drama, you retouchers seem to be a pretty calm and certainly a very helpful group

After downloading Godmother's fabulous tutorial video from her deviant art page maybe a year or so back - and realizing that as good as I and my clients think I am at retouching I don't know JACK about the real thing, I have been using what teensy bits of spare time I have in my editing schedule to begin the process of actually learning how to dodge and burn.

I don't know what kind of photo geek I have to be to say this but...it's fascinating stuff. Not something I can use on our basic business headshot - we do tons of those - or on a band or a fitness model (tons again) but on a close up beauty photograph, it is a technique I am determined to continue to improve.


So...attached are a before and after from a recent studio set - the before is cropped a little closer, to really see her skin - on the after I have worked only on the skin of her face, nothing touched in terms of hair or the skin on her on her neck.

I would love any and all critiques, comments, chucks to the head, whatever you've got that you feel will help me improve my technique when it comes to D&B.

Many thanks,

Shannon Fontaine
www.shannonfontaine.com

[Shannon Fontaine]

if I have not followed site etiquette in posting this request for a critique someone just let me know what to fix - again many thanks

[mistermonday]

Shannon, welcome to RetouchPro. No, you have not violated any etiquette. Sometimes responses to requests for critiques are slow coming.
At a zoomed out view you seem to have done a good job on the skin. There are a number of places I marked up where I see imperfection in the skin - dark or light spots, different color from adjacent skin, residual clone line, etc. These may not be there in your hi res version and may have resulted from the low res jpg you have uploaded - I just can't tell from this small size version.
High level inputs:
- Too many random hairs. Fix a lot of the ones that go across the flow of the hair and just distract the eye.
- Bottom lip where shown
- Eyebrow hair left compared to right
- Lots of texture / bumps above model's left eye, but blurry above right eye
- Model's right cheek line seems to have a band of saturated skin that does not appear in the Before image
- Eyelashes need some work
- Hotspots around rim of nostril
While I am probably coming across a bit picky, beauty retouches are all about minute details
Overall you After image is a major improvement over the Before.
Regards, Murray

[Shannon Fontaine]

Murray,

Thank you, truly, thank you so much for taking the time to give such a detailed critique - I will study it in depth and hopefully repost a finished version at some point next week.

Best,

Shannon