Magazine-style portraits

In an effort to stay on top of the most current and effective photographic and retouching techniques, from time to time I take workshops or purchase online course from industry leaders in a given subject.  Recently, I purchased a course on high-end retouching from CreativeLive with the goal of achieving each portrait's full potential in post-production in order to 1) provide a more polished product to my clients, 2) improve my portraiture stock sales (currently the weakest-selling part of that portfolio), and 3) attract more commercial clients in the beauty and jewelry industries.

Above are a couple of images I took recently that were lit and directed with these end products in mind and retouched using techniques for magazine-style portraits.