First time night portrait with a 50mm

[lerabu]

Hi!

So! This is the first time I took my 50mm lens for a walk. Straight out of the box, fully opened aperture ring, night time, a walk with my wife, city lights for that beautiful bokeh!

I tried to have some of the window shop lights illuminate my wife's face from on side and the city lights from the other so that I didn't have too much contrast between the sides of her face.

My main question is: How could I have made the colours more vibrant and her face brighter to make it pop just that much more but without brightening too much the background? Is it just postprocessing stuff or is there something that can be done on site?

Also general comments about composition or any other tips are more than welcome!

In postprocessing I removed the noise, lightened the image up with a "Screen" blend mode and sharpened it up a bit to make up for sharpness loss due to denoising.

Enough talk. Onto the picture! :=)

EXIF:
Camera Nikon D80
Exposure 0.008 sec (1/125)
Aperture f/1.8
Focal Length 50 mm
ISO Speed 1600
Exposure Bias 0 EV
Flash No Flash
Lens: Nikkor 50mm 1.8D AF

I must say, this little lens is a gem! I was astonished at the colours out of camera!

[gturner]

glad to see you are enjoying it!
Did you shoot RAW?
Is there not a "fill light" option you can use to lift the right side of her face a little?
The bright lights are fairly distracting as they darken her face by being close to it.

[lerabu]

Hi!

Thanks for the comment! Yes it is a RAW shot. I will try adding fill light. I try to seldom use it as I sometimes dislike the results it gives, I will try it! Thanks for the pointer

I agree about the lights, maybe I should select them and decrease brightness.

[gturner]

I would try and get that dark ring under her eye filled and a slight bump of fill light would do that.

Block the lights in the back out with your hand and see what happens. They do have a nice effect, but mess up the composition because the eye viewers eye is pulled to them