Beauty close-up lit with an octabox, skin texture left intact.

Encargos de belleza y producto2022–2026Case study

Beauty and product: still life, texture and skin

Cosmetics still life and beauty portraiture: controlled light, untouched skin texture and high-end retouching for catalogue and campaign.

Client: Encargos de belleza y producto
Year: 2022–2026
Role: Photographer and retoucher
Categories: Photography · Product · Editorial
Tools: Photoshop · Lightroom · Gemini (Nano Banana) · Canva

The project

The brief

This is the block of commissions where the studio is in charge: cosmetics, packaging, small jewellery and beauty portraits. There is no luck and no decisive moment here — there is a lighting scheme decided before anything is switched on, and a shot list that gets completed.

For product I work with two narrow strip boxes to define the edge of the packaging, a black flag to keep that edge dark, and focus stacking whenever the label has to hold up at 100%. For beauty, a 90 cm octabox at 45° with a silver reflector, and one non-negotiable rule in post: correction is done by dodging and burning, never by blurring skin. The pores stay.

Retouching is half the commission, which is why I do it myself. Cleanup, rebuilt highlights, density, split-toning and output grain. When a brief calls for a context that does not exist — a set, a surface, light from another hour — I build it with AI on top of the real shot, and I say so.

My contribution

I design the lighting scheme before the shoot and hand it over in writing along with the shot list.
I shoot product with focus stacking and a black flag so the edge of the packaging reads clean.
I light beauty with a 90 cm octabox and a silver reflector, metering so the result repeats across sessions.
I retouch by dodging and burning — no frequency separation, no skin blur: the texture stays whole.
I rebuild highlights and clean packaging surfaces without turning the material to plastic.
I build the context a shoot cannot provide with AI, always on top of the real frame and disclosed on delivery.