New Forest Shoot

Here are some unedited images from my location shoot. I am so happy to have this done as it was really difficult to rely on the weather, and I previously had to postpone it twice. Unfortunately my photographer could not do the shoot and let me know the day before so I was unable to find a replacement, but I didn't want to have to rearrange again as I could not guarantee that we would have another sunny day. I took photography as an A-level and after attending the photography classes that had been arranged for us I felt confident that I could create some great images.

For this shoot I had a first year make up student Charli Roth assisting me and she was brilliant. She did the hair and makeup on the girls while I concentrated on the application of the pieces which made the whole shoot go much smoother, and she came along to the shoot ready to do any touch ups and happy to help by holding reflectors etc while I was photographing the girls.

Overall, I am really happy with how the images came out. I still need to edit the final images for the website but once that is done they can go straight on there and I can start to build the final site.
When applying the pieces I found that the fern-style leaves (in the bottom image) were much easier to apply and blend in than the branch like ones. I think this is because there was less Baldiez to blend away on these pieces, and the baldiez has a slight shine to it which will stand out in images as it is not skin texture. The borders worked really well and made it much easier to apply the pieces, but I feel they may have been too far from the original piece as there was then lots of baldies to blend away and get rid of. I am also starting to find that foundation often makes the pieces look less realistic, so I think I will only use foundation to subtly blend pieces into the skin tone, rather than to try and cover them.
I feel like this should could have benefited from more experienced models as I think that many of the images just had the same facial expressions/poses, and while I did my best to direct them it would have been great if they were both more comfortable at trying things out and looking more natural in front of the camera. I got these models through posting on the Solent casting page, and I only got responses from these two girls so didn't have any to choose from. I feel that had I been paying models, I could have got a much more professional looking shoot with models booked in.
 Also I really struggled with the styling for this shoot, and I think that this really shows. It is a shame as I was posting/advertising for a stylist and even spoke to a few, but none of them had clothing for the girls as they were size 10, and as I didn't have budget for the styling I was left to do this for myself.
In future after the issues with models, styling and photography I think I will set aside a budget for these areas as it would be much easier to book in these professionals to give a much better overall look and shoot outcome.