Oiled skin produces lovely photographic tones and also emphasises the form of the figure the its highlights.

Lighting Diagram
A softbox to the rear of the model produces those skimming specular highlights and shadow modelling.

The skin is oiled with baby oil and then I use a flower water mister to spray water droplets over the top.

Look for shape and posture in the poses for long shot work.
Model: Rebecca Mitchell

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1) Watch the hands
 
Don’t show a flat hand – whether palm out or back facing the camera – it makes the hand look big, turn the hand edge on.   Don’t have hands together, especially not fingers knotted together.
 
2) Turn the legs.
 
With a sitting figure, don’t shoot with the knees facing the camera, turn the legs to one side for a better look.
 
3) Watch out for bra straps.
 
Bane of my life, bra straps are always creeping into pictures and they are suprisingly fiddly to remove in photoshop.
 
4) Watch out for bra, …

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1) Turn your sitters back to the sun
 
Now the temptation is to have the sitter face the sun, so they are well lit, but this tends to lead to hard shadows and squinty eyes.   Much better to have their back to the sun and their eyes wide open.
 
2) Understand high-key and low-key
 
A high key image has largely lighter tones in the picture, a low-key image is predominantly dark tones.  But the subject is always correctly exposed.   An over-exposed image is not high-key, its just over exposed.
 
3) Ditch the light stand, …

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One of the beauties of my studio space is that it has a very large coved area where dance movement and action have lots of room to flow.

Lighting Diagram
Lit from very side-on to produce shadow and contrast for form. The main light is left, the fill is right.

There is an almost “bat” like quality to the model on this image.

And I have montaged to seperate shots together. When creating this kind of montage sometimes the limbs need to cross to join the two figures together.
In this case, …

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1) Think purpose before portrait
 
What is the picture being taken for?   Is it for the sitters wall or the sitters facebook, or the sitters corporate brochure.   Is it for the sitter, or their partner, or their parents.   Is it for you, the model, the magazine, for stock.   Now most shoots are often a mix of all the above, so make sure you cover all the bases. 
 
2) Get a model release
 
Really, a proper signed release.   If you think a shoot is going to lead to images that could be published …

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