Urban Decay Cosmetics,
Lo Fi Lip Mousse

Julia Kuzmenko McKim photographed and retouched macro beauty imagery for Urban Decay’s Lo Fi Lip Mousse collection.

These frames are outtakes from the Lo Fi Lip Mousse collection campaign, where the creative direction called for clean, polished skin, vibrant product color, and natural lip texture.

The technical aspects of macro beauty photography often work against lip products. On set, Lo Fi Lip Mousse had a soft-matte finish: comfortable, non-drying, with a saturated, even payoff. In the captured macro lip shots, however, even under the brilliant, soft light of my Broncolor Para 88, the natural texture of the lips rendered as deep crevices, reading to a viewer as dry, heavily textured lips.

That gap between the product on the lips and the product through a macro lens was the challenge for our post-production. So the retouching came down to detailed, crevice-by-crevice work: preserving true lip texture while restoring the vibrancy and comfortable finish we saw on set.