How Warm Do You Like 'Em?

I've noticed that pretty girl photographers are all over the map when it comes to how much warmth and color saturation they'll add to the skin tones of their models. I'm talking, of course, about color temperature warmth, not temperature warmth.

For those who prefer their model's skin tones warm -- some shooters prefer them really warm while others prefer them moderately warm -- many photographers add warmth in production: Warming filters and gels, e.g., CTO (Color Temperature Orange), Bastard Amber, and others are utilized, as are gold reflectors. White Balance adjustments are also used to warm images. Some shooters use combinations of the above in their quest to present models with warm skin tones.

Production techniques aren't the only way to warm a model. Many photographers prefer to warm in post: Again, filters are employed, albeit digital filters, as well as post-production color adjustments.

Then, there are those photographers who prefer way less warmth, that is, they opt to cool their model's skin tone. Most of these people, it seems, rely more on post-production tricks (rather than production techniques) to cool the skin. Generally, this is accomplished with digital filters or by reducing skin tone with color (de)saturation methods.

There are those, of course, who work hard to present skin tones as naturally as possible. (This is often the most difficult to achieve as many variables, such as monitor calibration, come into play in greater ways.)

Which is preferable? Very warm? Warm? Cool? De-saturated? I have no idea. Personally, I prefer to moderately warm the model's skin and, generally, I'll do it through a combination of production and post-production techniques.

Warm is sexy. Leastwise, that's how many people perceive warm skin tones, especially when there's a lot of skin being exposed. And, well, that's what I do! I shoot pretty girls in sexy ways with a lot of skin exposed. So it's natural, I suppose, that I choose warming techniques to enhance the sexy value of the images I capture.

Occasionally, though, I hope to make my images look more artsier rather than sexier. In those cases, I'll cool the model's skin or de-saturate the color. Why does cool skin and/or de-saturated color seem to evoke a more artsy perception of nude and semi-nude pretty girl photographs? Again, I have no idea. It's just one of those things. It's simply how many people seem to perceive these things. Go figure, right?

The pretty girl at the top is Austin from one day of last week's production shoots. (I was booked every day this past week.) We were at a bookstore in Venice, California, and there was this area in the back of the bookstore with the counter and the stools and the brick wall and, well, I thought it would make for a decent shooting set. I lit Austin with two lights: a main light modified with a 32" Larson "Super-Silver" Reflectasol (I wanted to enhance the specular highlights on the stools and the counter-top) and a hair light, boomed behind and above Austin, modified with a small, rectangular, Photoflex soft box. There was also a skylight above and behind the model which provided a bit more edge-lighting behind her. I didn't do much in production to warm Austin, in fact the silver umbrella was probably working against me (warm color-wise) so I pumped up the warmth a bit in post. MUA was Melissa.