I do a lot of work with young girls and women who either want to become models or just want to feel like a model for a day. One of them is the beautiful Nicola.

We set out with the goal of creating a handful images she can use to start a portfolio and learn a little about posing and expressions in front of the camera, what we got were some stunning final images and a young woman who was very shy at first but quickly warmed up to the camera and became more confident with every shot, but see for yourselves...

Before and After Picture using the same lighting. The Before picture is a common "Polaroid" to send to agencies.

To make the experience complete, we worked with Make-Up Artist and Hair Stylist Dawn Newsome. She is an amazingly talented artist and always a pleasure to work with.

For the photo shoot itself, we decided to go with different styles to show versatility and decided to go with two headshots and two body shots. All pictures can be enlarged by clicking on them.

I hope you enjoyed the pictures and if this is something your daughter or your son would be interested in, use the Contact Form.

This is the post for my second test with the D800 and while the first one was outdoors, the second one was shot in studio using a grey background. I kept the lighting simple and non-distractive, a Profoto D1 1000 (click here) with a Mola Demi (click here) and of course my already dear Nikon D800 (click here) with the Nikon 85mm f/1.8G (click here). Since a few people have been complaining that it takes them a while to get the D800 to work, I put that to the test. The objective was to get two headshots out of a 15 minute session (including lighting adjustments and not using an assistant). That's about the time you get when you do headshots of corporate executives. My personal best was 80 headshots in four hours including setup and tear down using one assistant.

The picture has some minimal retouching done, such as cropping, spotting, contrast adjustment and black-and-white conversion.

First Timers: Nicola Ferris

Nikon D800 - Second Test with Sample Image (Studio Shoot)