I've been experimenting with trying to shoot aesthetically pleasing photos of legs but it's so difficult to do it properly and I'm having a really hard time, mostly with the lighting.
I did some experiments (sadly I can't post them because I agreed with the models to keep them private) but I keep horrifically failing at it and just getting mediocre results.

What kind of light do I need to obtain an aesthetically pleasing effect like pic related?

I also noticed that high quality sensors just tend to catch a LOT of imperfections that the naked eye would normally ignore unless paying very close attention, what are some editing techniques to smooth skin that could be use to mitigate the problem?

Any examples and tips are very much appreciated