Hair and eyes

During the workshops I get a lot of questions on the topic of hair and eyes.
Now let me make one thing clear, I strongly believe in rules…. but I also strongly believe in bending or breaking the rules when needed. And let’s be totally honest when we all follow the rules photography would be pretty boring. So although I will teach my students during the first workshops that it’s always important to see both eyes and have catchlights in the eyes, in the more advanced workshops I will always try to break those rules for some setups.

For me the expression and composition, color etc. is al much more important in a shot that just being able to see the eyes. The following shots were all taken this week during a workshop I taught for Fotoflits (the Dutch Elinchrom agent). Normally Marie (the model) will bring some nice dresses and extreme clothing but by accident she left one of her bags in the train (it’s back now) and then it’s time to start improvising.

And although she did bring enough sets in the second bag I thought it was nice to also focus on other options than just clothing. Now I have to be honest with Marie and her bright red hair it’s pretty easy to be creative with hair and colors but even then as you can see in these images it’s very very important to really work on the lighting and the expression of the model, what normally the eyes will do now has to be done with the mouth and composition.

The eyes are always an attention grabber in a portrait, when those are gone it’s much harder to create something that draws the viewer in, sunglasses are (for me) the perfect “training wheels” because it still gives you the sense of seeing the eyes as you can see in the shot above and below.

However the next step I would advise you to take is work a bit more with the hair and mouth and try to create something that draws the viewer in. You will very quickly notice that if you practice this it will become fun and you will be able to be more creative with your compositions and story telling.

 
And one more image where I went a bit more into Photoshop.