Killer Lighting - If you've never seen Gavin O'Neil's work then you should

I'm sure many of you already know Gavin O'Neill or have seen his work.

He does absolutely beautiful work with both lighting and skin work that is top notch.

Take a look.

http://www.gavinoneill​.com/engine/SID/100013​3.htm

he's phenomenal! Thx for sharing

Not to mention some amazing MUAs..! Very cool stuff, I'm still trying to figure out a few of those.

I wonder if this is really his blog? If it is he is very open in explaining his technique..

http://gavinoneillphot​o.blogspot.com/

Really great stuff! Thanks for sharing

Those shots are amazing, reminds me how much I have to learn

Fizzler wrote in post #12055956
I wonder if this is really his blog? If it is he is very open in explaining his technique..

http://gavinoneillphot​o.blogspot.com/

I would assume it is his. There's a link to it on his website.
Great stuff!

Great stuff!

Great stuff. He reminds me a lot of stephen Eastwood in terms of style. Im a huge fan of Eastwood.

Can you tell beauty dish in use on some of the shots? To me it's always tricky to place the dish in the right position to get both catch lights and nice shadow under the nose.

from his blog...

"Beyond that, some of the original crispness in my images, is just about using good lenses, and also, very high f-stops when shooting. Like I would rarely shoot beauty at less than f22, which surprises some photographers, but that definitely helps to improve the overall sharpness of the image, and also, makes up for the fact that I'm usually very close to the subject when shooting, which reduces the depth of field range of the lenses, so the higher f-stops help to counteract that."

Shallow DoF is nice but also has to be precisely controlled.
I think the comments about F stop and shooting distance are a great suggestion.

Missing focus with F2.8 or F2.0 can make a shot unusable. Having the whole face in focus is never a bad thing.

As long as he's not experiencing diffraction, which I assume he's not, then it makes perfect sense. I like my subject to be in focus from the tip of the nose to the back of the head and hair. I also like to work close to my subjects for tight shots. Even a 200mm lens on a full frame body, shooting tight head shots, puts you pretty close to your subject and at those close distances the depth of field gets really shallow. If the subject has their head turned so there is a near and far eye you can have one soft or out of focus eye even at f/11 or f/13, and pushing the aperture to f/22 really tightens things up so that the different planes of focus are all sharp.

I rather like the attention to detail in his blog. I love it when successful folks share their knowledge much like many of the more experienced photographers on this forum.