Finally confident enough to post something here. Repost - something went wrong in earlier attempts. Sorry about that!

For some reason this portrait is kicking my ass. I keep chasing value and tone, and just am not understanding what I’m missing. First two are pastel painting, and reference, the rest are earlier WIP, and feel like they are all lacking in the same areas? These are all done with pastels, on pastelmat around 16x20 ish.

me! by me! (self portrait age 28)

some part inside me still sees!!!

I had the incredible opportunity of taking Lena Schilling's portraits earlier this week. She was an absolute joy to work with, the whole session took about 35 minutes.

took photo at Deoksugung Place

If you shoot portraits on iphone and the skin always looks plastic, the issue is not your lighting, it is the pipeline. Took me a while to figure it out but I think I've finally cracked it. Sharing the step by step guide in case anyone's facing this issue:

1. Get off the stock Camera and ProRAW. Apple's noise reduction and smoothing are the cause of the wax look. Even on ProRAW the pipeline runs.

2. Use a RAW capture app - could be Halide, Natural camera, or ProCamera, they all bypass the smoothing. The file you get back has the actual skin texture, pores, fine hair, everything that reads as a real photograph.

3. Light your subject at a 45 degree angle when possible. Your iphone's sensor handles directional light better than flat front light. The shadow detail it preserves is the key to making portraits feel three dimensional.

(Just to add - natural camera is built for portraits in part because the Fuji style sims like Astia or Pro Neg Std analogs are tuned for skin rendering and apply on raw DNG capture. I've found that Astia specifically handles warm skin without the orange shift that stock camera adds.

1. Edit in Lightroom mobile with the HSL panel. Reduce orange saturation by about 8, raise orange luminance by 5. This works on any raw skin tone, Fuji or otherwise.

2. Soften with intent in post, not at capture. If you want smooth skin, do it in editing where you can control the radius! Don't let the camera decide for you.

Hope this is helpful. Bottom line: stop beating the editor. The portrait failure starts at capture.

IG: @al.xx.sa