Today, I'd like to take you through the steps involved in creating an image, from idea to retouching, as I do them today.
Step 1: Find an idea
This essential creative step is not so simple. Here's an image of my empty studio, so it all starts with this grey cube... 2m75 wide, 2m50 high and 3m long. In this empty space, everything becomes possible when the imagination fills it. That's what I find so exciting about the creative process: the relationship with the void and welcoming all its potential.

I'll go into more detail about my creative approaches in future posts on this blog, but here's a quick summary:
Starting from the world of the models. Each model has her own preferences, her own style, her own passions, her own ideas and even her own way of capturing the light. The first tool of creativity is conversation! A photoshoot will be all the more successful if it matches the tastes and world of the models. The person will experience a sense of fulfilment, authenticity and enthusiasm that will be clearly visible in the images.
Starting with a theme that has already been explored, but from a different angle. As my work has progressed, I've seen themes emerge that I like to return to with new approaches. In themselves, they are an inexhaustible source of inspiration. Women of the World, Nature, Dreamlike, Romantic, Spiritual, Committed, Dancing, Duets, Creative, Pictorial, Fresco, Historical, Retro or Black and White, Dark, Goddesses, Heroines, Warriors, Mythological, Nude, Primitive, Sensual in Lingerie and Body Details are all intentions that guide my creativity, because without creative constraints, nothing is possible. If you take a simple historical theme, thousands of historical characters come to mind, as do mythological or world themes. These intention guides have become invaluable to me.
Starting with the work of an artist, stylist, make-up artist or bodypainter. It's another way of being 'constrained' in the good sense of the word. Each creation becomes an opportunity to highlight a specific theme.
Start with a bought outfit. I often look for outfits and accessories on the internet, avoiding costumes that are too kitsch. I've found that an accessory that seems fairly insignificant, properly illuminated, can become very interesting.
Start a playful and symbolic conversation in synchronicity. I often use symbolic cards, and in a playful conversation, I sometimes draw inspiration from these cards at random to define a shoot intention. I'll be doing a specific article on this approach.
Improvisation. Over the last few years, I've sometimes started a shoot without knowing at all what was going to come out of it. It's a very interesting approach, but of course it can give quite variable results.
A conversation with a generative AI. Lately, I've been testing the use of AI to come up with really new ideas. Although there's room for improvement, as many of the ideas are either too conventional or technically unfeasible, it does provide some interesting avenues on which to build.
Step 2 : Meeting the models
I'm adding this step here as an integral part of the creative process. Getting to know each other, talking about our backgrounds, in a way making an alliance with the models is essential! As well as giving us the pleasure of better understanding the person with whom we're about to embark on this creative adventure, this stage helps to develop mutual trust and reassurance. It's important to understand that as artistic photographers, we explore emotions, expressions, and sometimes nudity or even sensuality. Being a man, and working mainly with women, this trust is fundamental! And when I say reciprocal, it's also about confirming that people have the intention of sharing and not just profit or social network narcissism to feed off. To be honest, there have been times over the years when I've wanted to give up photography because of some pretty toxic encounters where the models have the impression that they're ‘paying’ for the shoot simply by being naked. Today, I choose the models I work with meticulously, giving priority to mutual enthusiasm and the desire to create even more than plastic beauty.
Etape 3 : Shooting
As I do a lot of retouching, at the beginning I didn't put as much importance and certainly not enough rigour into shooting. I used to say to myself, ‘I'll see about that in retouching’ and I think that was a real mistake. Today, if I get a perfect image out of the sensor, it can either be enhanced by retouching or even kept as it is. It's great fun to see these images emerge, there are a few per shoot and I'm enjoying them more and more.
To describe the lighting process, I'd say that I use intention and theme a lot and then translate them with my flash modellers. I have about ten possible light sources and nearly twenty modellers. And then there are all the coloured gelatines that create atmosphere and specific accents. Choosing the right light also depends on the models, because not all lights highlight everyone in the same way! The age, features, preferred profiles and even complexes of the models are all guides when trying to enhance their beauty through light. I also use a monitor that acts like a mirror to correct their poses and also to create enthusiasm for the beauty of the images I create as I go along. Talking of poses, my personal style is to leave the models quite free in their poses and to guide them if need be according to the theme and also to what I see, becoming myself another mirror of the shoot.
Step 4 : Selection of shots
I use Google Photos as a collaborative platform to choose the shots for a shoot, usually starting with an average of 300 images per theme. You can like and comment in real time, and most of the time I choose 90% of the images that the models choose. It's usually very consistent, and it's easy to respect the inalienable image rights of the models who take the photos. More often than not, I go back over the shoot once or twice and approve a few additions to the proposed selection.

Step 5 : Retouching
Then comes the super-creative and meditative moment of photo retouching. I'll describe the steps I take today.
Before retouching the image - I do a lot of research and create backgrounds using AI. I currently use three tools: ChatGPT, Midjourney and Magnific. I describe to ChatGPT my intentions for writing texts to feed the AI and together we come up with a very detailed prompt in English. This involves describing the scene in detail, the colours, the light, but also the type of camera, the lens used and the depth of field. This is a fairly lengthy process, but once I've done it, I can generate hundreds of different images in Midjourney, iterating each time to get the perfect result. Once I've found the images, I use Magnific, an impressive AI that enlarges the image by recreating the details missing in low definition. Using this approach, I can create any background I want. Here's an example:
A photograph view from above of a sunken shipwreck, partially covered in marine growth and corals in shades of turquoise and violet. A net is caught on the ship's bow, floating gently in the water. Rays of light penetrate the water, illuminating the scene and creating a mystical, underwater ambiance. Small fish swim around the wreck, adding to the sense of an underwater adventure. Captured with a Canon R5 and a 24-70mm lens, this setting emphasizes the detailed textures and mysterious beauty of the shipwreck --ar 3:2 --style raw

L'outil magnific

I've got my backgrounds, and now I can start retouching in Photoshop:
Scene clean-up - I remove the flashes, the feet, and produce a first image with no other elements than the grey background and the model.
Skin retouching - I remove all ephemeral elements, pimples, undesirable marks, while retaining all the features of the models. Sometimes, at the request of the models, I correct anatomical complexes. As modern cameras have incredible resolution, every pore of the skin is detailed. For me, retouching is a way of getting closer to natural vision, which isn't as precise! Nobody has a microscope for eyes, and I try most often to recreate the natural vision that we all have when we look at a person. As my intention is usually very pictorial, I avoid the hyper-realism that some people like in photography, that's my style :)
Trimming the model - This used to take hours, but Photoshop has recently become amazing at trimming in a matter of seconds. By clipping, I keep two layers, the model and the background, which contains all the light and shadow information, which saves an incredible amount of time.
Adapting the background - This is a tricky stage, involving adapting the perspective, tones and contrast of the background images to the shot. I've recently been using a good plugin from Piximperfect that saves me a lot of time. It adapts the background and the subject and all I have to do is make a few adjustments. Finally, I add the studio shadows layer on a grey background for added realism.
Overall colourimetry - Finally, I do some finishing work. I really like the combination of light orange for the highlights and dark turquoise for the lowlights, which gives a rather painterly and sometimes cinematic tone to the overall rendering.
As I write this, I'm going to give you a quick video capture of my screen to show you my fast-track retouching process. I'm going to start with an image I've already chosen.
And here are the two images before and after retouching:
Et voilà :)
I'm delighted to be able to share with you this process, which has matured year after year. Don't hesitate to comment or like, it's motivating!
Yohann
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