But, what if the "professional" you have hired really has no understanding of aperture, shutter speed, or ISO? What do you think happens? The answer is, that your photographs will end up overexposed, underexposed, or blurry.
The purpose of this blog post is to educate the you, the client, not the "professional". The professional will already know these things. I will be doing a three part series for the client. The first is skin overexposure, the second will be skin smoothing, and the third will be underexposure.
When you are searching on FB or other forms of media for a photographer, please ask yourself a few very important questions. 1) Is the skin so bright you need shades to look at it? 2) Do the people in the photo have pink, red, orange, purple, white, or green skin? 3) Should the skin be grey if it is not a black and white photo?
If you ask yourself these few simple questions you should be able to find the right photographer for you.
Here are a few examples of incorrect and correct skin exposures. The skin exposure samples below came directly from "professionals" located on FB. Every example came from the SAME area of a portrait.
This first example is what professional photographers call completely blown out skin. I have never met any person with paper white skin. This is way overexposed. I need sunglasses to look at it.
This is an example of blown out/overexposed skin with horrid color cast. Color cast is an extremely undesired effect. No professional photographer wants color cast and neither should you. I would not want a photo of myself where I looked blistered. Another common color casts is green (from grass). This should be avoided at all cost.
This final example is from a photo that was converted to a black and white image. There should be multiple shades of grey into black (from the shadows). White is acceptable in some areas of a black and white photograph, just NEVER EVER on the skin. Again, I have never met a person with paper white skin.
I hope this has helped you. If you have any further questions about proper exposure or color cast please send me a message and I will answer it for you!
Thanks kindly and happy photographer shopping!
Nikki-
