Self portrait

[DMW0004]

My first attempt at a self-portrait. Any thoughts or observations would be greatly appreciated!

F 5.6
ISO 100
shutter 1/60
Flash On

[DMW0004]

any critique would b appreciated... i am here to learn!

[BigFuzzy]

Hi DMW,

Welcome to DPS firstly. Hopefully you'll find it useful and helpful.

My comments are going to probably sound a bit harsh, but I hope you believe that I'm trying to be constructive and help push you.

That being said I will at least compliment you for apparently getting the focus on the eyes right. One of my very huge pet peeves is people not getting the focus right when doing portraits. So well done on that.

Besides that I find there are two main issues holding this image back.
1. Lighting - the pop-up straight-on flash is never a good idea. It flattens the shadows hence flattens the subject/image overall and that's happening here. The face has so much depth and contours that get lost with straight-on flash.
2. Concept - In the end, we've all seen a gazillion of almost this exact same image. Don't get me wrong, I think everyone starting off does this, me included. But it just doesn't stand out to me in any way as, to me, it's not special in any way. Nothing really wrong with it, just nothing that draws me in (especially with that lighting). It's good to play and learn, but may I suggest that when taking any image you always ask yourself, "has this been done to death?" and "how can I make this different and distinctly mine?" Then start shooting.

Two small things: The color is very blue to me. It's a taste thing, but I don't like it. Could be my monitor though, so ignore me if I'm off.
Cropping.. it doesn't follow any of the more traditional ratios, so to me at least, it feels a bit off. Plus I'm not sure how much I like it cropped right under the nose that way.

So, to me, there's very little really wrong with this, but it also doesn't draw me in any way mostly because of the fact I've seen it so many times before.

Keep shooting, but also keep pushing yourself.
See ya!

[BigFuzzy]

Originally Posted by DMW0004

any critique would b appreciated... i am here to learn!

PS be patient.. a couple of hours is nothing.

[scootermcq]

Nice focus on the eyes, and composition is interesting enough.

Lighting is straight on as can be seen with the catch lights smack in the middle of the pupil. This creates a rather flat lighting. If you were to bring the lighting off camera from an angle it would create more interesting lighting (wrap from shadow to highlight) and add a 3 dimensional look to the image.

[Rentham]

In addition to good advice from Al and Scott, I'd add that I never mind cropping the top of the head. But cropping the chin and above almost always feels weird to me.

[Durnik20]

Im new too but I will throw out their that the crop below the nose does feel a bit akward.

I will also throw out their that anywhere you get "critiques" on your work it is going to sound harsh but take it in good stride no one is being mean, but those negative comments are the best way to improve!

The only thing, and this really is just personal taste, is that this has an incredibly shallow depth of field. The face is perfect and razor sharp but as soon as you leave that plane of focus, things go fuzzy fast so there is stubble on the cheek that is sharp up front but gets blurry quickly and the ears are both fuzzy too. Was a bit distracting for their to be such a large difference in clarity over the course of maybe an inch of distance on the face. If thats what you were going for though then great! For me it was just pulled my gaze a bit.

[DMW0004]

awesome! thanks for the feedback! i will try out some of the things y'all mentioned and try this out again... especially the lighting and cropping aspects. I had never actually used the on camera flash before this but I figured I would try it out to see what it would look like... lesson learned haha. I appreciate the honest opinions though!

[EOBeav]

I agree with comments from Fuzzy. Your image is a little blue.

How did you get your eyes zeroed in like that doing a self portrait? Did you have a 2nd person helping out? I'd love to know!

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Now playing: Steve Miller Band - Joker
via FoxyTunes

[DMW0004]

i honestly liked the blue but i guess since so many people are noticing it means it was a little over the top. For the focus I knew I wanted the eyes in focus so i put a yardstick upright, focused on the yard stick then positioned myself in line with the yardstick and moved it away. Kind of rudimentary but it was the best idea I had haha...took a couple shots though to get it right.