I’m sure that this looks like a completely out of place post so let me elaborate. When I am doing boudoir makeup, I am often asked what my opinion is of mineral makeup. Having used it myself for over a year, my reply is “I stopped using it because I didn’t like the way I looked in photos.”

Most girls just laugh because it looks good in person and there isn’t paparazzi stalking them. But I end up getting my picture taken a lot at weddings and with the popularity of point & shoot cameras and networking sites that would mean my ghost-white face was going to be all over the place and it was going to be tagged and linked to my profile. YAY.

So further investigation brought me to the two words in the title of this post “titanium dioxide”. That’s the culprit. You look great in person, but when hit with flash you look like a pasty ghost. Not that there is anything wrong with pasty ghosts, but well, not everyone wants to be one.

The pasty  scale does depend on the kind of flash in question. Any light source that is small, bright & concentrated will cause this effect, so that can be anything from a point and shoot camera to a professional flash.

So ladies, it’s ok to love your mineral makeup and utilize it for every day use. Just leave it at home if you are going to be photographed – especially while in a wedding party – because pasty white is not something that I fix in post processing.