How to Shoot Creative Beauty Images using a Star Filter

Lindsay Adler

Lindsay Adler is a fashion photographer, educator, and author based in New York City. You can follow her work and see her photography on her website, lindsayadlerphotography.com, or on Instagram @lindsayadler_photo.

I wanted to take a moment to share a tool I’ve been using a lot recently for creative effects– a star filter. I’ve been using star filters either to achieve in-camera creative techniques or to give a nostalgic vintage feel to some of my beauty work.

As you search for star filters, you’ll also discover that there are a lot of different brands and star effects. My recommendation is that when you are looking to buy one, simply look at the sample images to see what the shape of the star looks like. For this demo, I chose the super inexpensive 4x Cross Screen Star Effect.

To make this effect show up you’ll need some sort of reflection on your subject. This could be a specular highlight on a piece of jewelry or it could be a reflection off of a piece of glitter. Here we’ve strategically placed star-shaped glitter on the eyes, lips, and cheeks. I decided that my inspiration would be cool midnight glam, so I will be using blue gels and tones.

When lighting for this technique, usually I choose a harder light source to help create the reflections and specular highlights required. To create reflections, I also have to consider the angles. If I have the light a bit lower to the subject or a fill light in the front, this will help to bounce more reflections. The other option is to have the subject rotate that head around in order to try to catch the angles required to get those highlights. Thankfully, as you pose your subject you can see the effect as it happens and it’s easy to tell when to ask your subject to pause for the perfect effect.

Here’s a breakdown of the lighting:

Main light: Magnum reflector to create hard, specular but also flattering light.

Fill light: Zoom reflector with blue gel to fill in a blue tone to the shadows.

Background light: Bare bulb with blue gel (I started with a 20-degree grid and later removed it). This creates a very subtle separation on the background and unifies the color in the scene.

Interested in learning how to create other beautiful images during your photo shoots? Check out these guides on 42 West:

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