How to make a good fashion photo (part I)

1. Check your Look

Your shape, skin, hair and whatever else you wear are totally up to your own choice. It should be to your liking. So the question is, can I really give you tips on this topic?
Yes, for sure. There are always some things you can check. First think of your skin. Which outfit will you wear? Will it be more formal or will it be casual? Do you want to have a gothic style or be a neco?
Whatever you want to wear, make sure your shape matches your skin and same for hair. This is easy? Let’s take a closer look.

• Does your skin and shape really match?

There are a lot of good shapes available in sl. And they fit to quite a lot of skins. Or maybe you have your favorite skin created by your own. But if it comes to wearing different skins every face looks somehow different. Especially the lips part. In most cases I don’t change anything about the shape of my head, eyes, chin, nose, ears. But I nearly always correct the lips to make the skin look really good. Sometimes I correct the sizing and position of the eyes, but the need for this is very rarly. But I often adjust the hair base. Well not the complete hair base, but the brows part to make the makeup of the eyes fitting better to the overall face.

Below is the first choice of skin and shape.

Now I change the skin. Left is with adjusted shape, right is the same shape as above.

Same here. Can you see the difference? It’s not much, but it changes a lot in your look.

So check mouth, eyes and eyebrows for every new skin and save a special shape for each skin.

• A deep look into your eyes

Acutally your eye type and color is your up to your decision. But look at the picture series below to see how different the look will be with different types of eyes and colors. The first picture shows very colorful and dreamy eyes due to the soft flow of the blue color and the large pupil. The second variant creates a very strong, sharp look due to the very small pupil. The third one is very natural.

The color of eyes should go with either skin and makeup or with the color of the clothes. However when you wear a darker tone of a skin and use very light colored eyes the eyes won’t seen anymore on a photo taken from some distance. You will see only white and that looks somehow weird.

Additionally there is the question if it’s better to have the white of the eye in pure white or a bit blended. I love pure white for full body shots. It makes the eyes more clearly visible in the face, even when they are very small. For close ups it’s better to use eyes with blended white, it’s more natural.

Often you can get eyes in large, medium in small sizes. Which one you should choose is depending on the eye size of your shape. Take care that not too much white is seen. The iris is never to be seen fully, it’s always a bit covered by the lower and upper eyelid.

• Does your skin color and your hair match?

Of course brown or black hair match with nearly all tones of skins. But the same is not true for blond hair. A very pale skin might look very boring (with the exception that you really intend to try for a very light impression). A very dark skin combined with light blond hair might look anything, but not naturally.
Actually I find blond hair very difficult in sl. I know only few hair creators who really managed to make good blond textures. In a lot of cases the blond looks dirty or two yellowish, but again, that’s up to your taste.

Additionally I love skins with hair bases. If you have hair with bangs there is no need for a hair base, but for hair without bangs it makes the transition from skin to hair look very naturally. And there is even hair you can’t wear without hair base. But there is only one skin designer I know (might be more, but these I don’t know) who offers skins with blond hair base. Most skin designers however offer skins with dark brown hair bases, perfect to go with black or dark brown hair. But be careful, I might look terrible with light brown or red hair. In my personal opinion for these cases it’s better to use no hair base at all.

Left ist the recommended version, right ist the version I personally don’t prefer.

It’s also worth to check if the shape of the hair fits to the skin. Different hair styles can make faces look totally different and not every hair style fits to every skin.

• Does your skin needs additional lashes?

Actually there are only a few skins that have really good lashes painted around the eyes. And since you can change the look of your eyes, the whole impression your face gives so much with lashes by choosing different styles, I prefer wearing lashes in almost every case.

There are two exceptions. When I’m using a very pale skin, I sometimes intended to have eyes that to not make too much contrast in the face and not to hide a decent eye shadow. And when I use hair that covers the eyes partly sometimes there is a bad interference of the transparent textures. So I sadly let the lashes go.

There will be a second part on styling your avatar to the best in the next days…