Professional Makeup Lighting – Everything You Need To Know
How To Get The Right Lighting For Makeup?
The right light is vital to successful makeup. Light can play strange tricks with its strength and shadows and this can be used to your advantage provided you are aware of it. Blinking disco lights can do wonderful, strange things to the colours and contours of your face; you can use bright glittering colours to great effect — but beware of looking grotesque; soft candlelight is the most flattering of all, throwing flickering shadows and a mellow smoothness that few faces possess on their own; clear daylight can be soft or, with bright sun, very harsh.
The important thing is to accept the basic structure of your face and make the most of it. Makeup tricks to change its shape or contours must never be obvious or they create no illusion and lose their point.
Light changes colors, affects tone and depth. It also changes shape. A trick of the light can make an older face look younger or vice versa. Photographers can flatter their subjects with a light that smooths out lines or choose one that records every blemish. The same makeup will look different in daylight, sunlight, twilight or nightlight.
In summertime or in bright sunshine, pale colors look stronger and many people look best with no foundation — just a moisturizer or sunscreen plus very light eyeshadow, mascara, lip gloss (blusher for pale faces only).
Nightlight needs stronger makeup. Start with moisturizer, then foundation to even the skin tone, outline lips with a pencil and dust over lots of loose face powder — the trick here are to use much more than you would expect and to dust off the excess; this way the matt look lasts longer. Next, contour your face with a powder blusher — use a darker shade in the hollows of the cheeks, perhaps around the eyes and temples. Shine on the eyes and lips reflects nightlight, makes the eyes look bright; also use lots of mascara and a dark pencil in the sockets and around the lashes for definition. Even a bright lip color can fade away at night to give your mouth a sharp outline with the pencil. Experiment with an iridescent highlighter, turning your head to see how it catches the light and where it is most flattering to you — the centre of the eyelid, the browbone, down the bridge of the nose, cheekbones, in the crease of the upper lips, the cleft of the chin are good places to try.
Electric light is incandescent, very even, and you need definite colors real reds for lips, russet, soft green or blue for eyes.
The neon light is harsh; avoid pale lips and grays and browns which hollow out the cheeks. Choose warm tones: tangerine, shocking pink, gilded, pearlized corals. Outline the edge of your lips, and try iridescent rose, bronze or copper around the eyes.
Candlelight is most flattering, providing you’re not sunburned. Avoid orange lips, hard eyes. Shape your face softly. Use lots of blushers. Soften, blush, lengthen the eye. For lips try muted blue reds or wine shades and matte mauve, prune or grape for eyes.
The first essential is to see your face in the right light. Makeup in the light you are going to be seen by, if at all possible. If you are going out in daylight, try and apply your make-up in the nearest equivalent — take a good mirror to a window, prop the mirror against it so that all the light falls on your face. Don’t choose harsh direct sunlight or you may be tempted to use too heavy a hand and end up looking over made-up. For evenings, makeup by electric light — then check the effect in softer light, candlelight, for instance, or a lower watt bulb. Place yourself in electric light in the same way as daylight — at a dressing table or in a bathroom, for instance — and try and arrange light to fall on your face from all angles (side lights slightly in front of you and any overhead light falling on your face, not the back of your neck). Don’t make-up in the bad light and, above all, don’t make-up where the source of light only falls on one side of your face. This will only mean your makeup ends up looking uneven or lopsided.
Make sure you are comfortable and try and leave more than enough time for the job so that you are relaxed and don’t run the risk of making time-consuming mistakes. First, pin hair out of the way to expose your face — if you are using heated rollers or setting it in any way, this is a good moment to save time. Make sure your skin is scrupulously clean, then apply a moisturizer. It’s a good idea to leave it a while to sink in, otherwise, your foundation may slip around too much. Use this time to assemble all the colors you are planning to use before starting — this avoids the sudden discovery of a missing favorite lip or eye color on which your whole make-up idea was based and the necessity of starting all over again.
