First Corporate Portrait shoot

[JackinthePan]

Hello,

I done my first portrait shoot yesterday for a law firm. I was asked by their web designer to take simple headshots for use on their website and brochure.

This image is one of the Partners and is the basic processed image from the RAW file. The question I have for anyone willing to answer is how far do I want to go with post processing?

My thinking is that as its a corporate portrait for a law firm I would leave it as is without any touchups/ airbrushing etc. but could it use some, what is the normal done thing in this situation?

Cheers,

Gavin.

[BigFuzzy]

Less an issue of PP, I would suggest that the image feels pretty underexposed.
My opinion is that these sorts of corporate headshots should be as natural as possible (ie as little PP as possible), so other than ensuring sharpness, contrast and clarity is to your liking, I'd leave it alone.

But try boosting the exposure and see what you think.. could be my monitor here, so I'm curious what others say about my thought that it's underexposed.

And thank you for using OCF!! And for doing a good job on a subject with glasses.

[zona5101]

it is underexposed... and if that is a white shirt the color is off as well.

edit to add...the shirt has a pink/magenta hue...

[JackinthePan]

Thank you both for the advice,

I will definatley bump the exposure up a bit. This always seems to be a problem I have.

zona - what colour do you see the shirt being?

Cheers,

Gavin.

[phaslab]

Hi Gavin.
IMHO this kind of photos should look very natural - I would PP as less as possible.
The only things I would do would be correcting the exposure (I think it's a bit underexposed) and checking the WB, since, as zona wrote, the white of the shirt doesn't look exactly... white. I'd like to see what you come up with.

[BigFuzzy]

Originally Posted by JackinthePan

Thank you both for the advice,

I will definatley bump the exposure up a bit. This always seems to be a problem I have.

zona - what colour do you see the shirt being?

Cheers,

Gavin.

Shirt looks pinkish to me.

[MrJones]

shirt is pink, while I guess it should be white.
the photo is underexposed like previous comments have mentioned.
just another thing that bothers me but I may be off here - aren't portraits like that should be in a vertical orientation? I mean, you've got a lot of gray boring areas on the sides while you could have captured a bit more of his outfit which, I'm sure, was more interesting than a gray background.

[JackinthePan]

I don't see pink so I guess either my eyes or my monitor are out, I will take this into consideration and re-process.

Mr Jones - This image is already cropped in from more surrounding 'grey' space, I took it this way to give me space to crop either portrait or landscape. When researching online I saw a lot of portraits cropped to landscape and like the look. Also, having this extra space gives myself and the designer room for whatever layout/ compostion of the website and brochure.

This was just a quick process and crop to gain feedback about the PP issue I was having and am grateful for the advice..

• boost exposure
• fix white balance
• keep airbrushing to a minimum

Cheers,

[EOBeav]

It's quite dark, and does have a maroon-ish/red-ish cast to it. If you shot raw, both should be easily correctable in Lightroom.



----------------
Now playing: The Allman Brothers Band - Jessica
via FoxyTunes

[JFSanders]

Shirt is pinkish/magenta toned and should have been shot in vertical/portrait orientation to eliminate the excess on the sides. Very good job on the glasses!

Jim