Photoset - Autumnal soft focus (Patreon)

This is a set I created with the stunning Chloe back at the beginning of October. We wanted an autumnal feel to the images, but due to the mild weather it was still too early for the trees to have lost their summer greenness, and neither of us wanted to wait another few weeks, when it would also be much colder, and not the greatest weather for a model to be wearing nothing but a sheer dress.

So to achieve the look we wanted I held a piece of sheer red fabric over the lens. This technique can be a little hot and miss - it very much depends on the light. Bright sunlight coming from the "wrong" direction can hit the fabric and create a flare effect, but in this instance we were in plenty of shade. The fabric affects the image in two ways: in adds a very slight coloured cast to the images, whilst also softening them considerably. You will notice some additional "red" colour to some parts of some of the images... this is where I have folded the fabric over to create a double thickness.

Another benefit of the sheer fabric is that it softens the skin texture a fair amount, which means that very little retouching is needed, and in some cases none at all. 

All of the rest of the colour toning was done in Lightroom, with Photoshop only being used on a handful of the images in the set, specifically ones that I felt needed a little extra skin retouching. Here is a Dropbox download link to the Lightroom preset should you wish to download it and give it a try.

Camera settings:

Canon 5D mk IV

Lens: Canon EF 24-70mm f/2.8

Aperture: f/2.8

Shutter speed: 1/200

ISO 1000