Halloween, yeah, we know we're a bit behind!

A local model wanted to mess about with some horror makeup in the studio. We had an empty slot for an hour and a half and we thought it would be fun!  As we only had one model, Si came up with the idea of Stacey being both good and evil in the same photo.  Here's what we did!

First we shot Stacey with the mutilated face makeup, having worked out where her 'innocent' self would be in the next shot.

We used strip boxes on the lights with grids fitted to them to 'narrow' the light spread so we didn't pick up too much of the background. We also used a snoot to give some extra light just to the face as well as a beauty dish fitted with a grid high up behind Stacey to give a rim light to her hair.

This is the first image, unedited, straight out of the camera!

Stacey then  cleaned her makeup off (which was a lot harder than it looks and involved bleach!) and put on a wig that was already in the studio. We then positioned her so that she was saying her prayers before bedtime. Yeah we know it's a cliche but hey, it was Halloween!

We lit her in the same way and got this

Then Si just put one image on top of the other in Photoshop and erased certain parts of the top layer to reveal the layer underneath.  Then, to make it look more sinister he split toned the image, altered the contrast and cropped it giving this as the final image (click on the images to see  them full size)

So, one model, an hour shooting and a quick bit of editing and we're pleased with the outcome! Let us know what you think?

If you have any cool ideas for a great photo shoot, get in touch. We like a challenge :)

Happy (belated) Halloween. Now we just have to think of something for Christmas at the north east's biggest and best family portrait studio!