An overly photoshoped portrait

Here’s a photograph I took for an online magazine that specialized in Asian weddings. They wanted something very mannequin looking that’s exactly what they said to me. At first I couldn’t work out what they meant but in the end I realized they just wanted something very heavily photoshoped. As I knew I would be editing the hell out of this image I tried something a little different with the lighting. Instead of using a softbox or any sort of soft light I used the total opposite and just went with a parabolic reflector and no cover. The light was horribly harsh from this but I spent the next hour just trying to get the hotspot of the light in the right place. I used a reflector under the models face on her lap to fill in the shadows as they were sharp and blacker than noir.

Usually not a fan of retouching portraits this much I like natural looking images but for this one off I surprised myself as I didn’t know how much detail could be brought back during editing, especially in the skin tones.