First self portrait with new camera

[roostabunny]

Playing with the remote on the used Canon T1i I just bought (so excited, been saving forever to bring back an old favorite hobby!) and thought I'd throw on a blazer and make myself a new LinkedIn profile photo.

It was taken with my "nifty fifty" (Canon 50mm F1.8) at 1/80 and f/2.2 (ISO 800). I shot it in my office using a 40W equivalent cfl blub in my desk lamp (which is one of those aluminum utility clip-on lights) as a main light and the overhead ceiling fan as a hair light. I'd just read about short lighting and broad lighting, etc and wanted to try it out.

Obviously, it's been cropped square, and I did some dodging around the eyes. Quite a bit I could say about the shortcomings of the shot from my point of view, but I don't want to steal your thunder.

Thanks for a great forum and thanks in advance for any feedback!

[BigFuzzy]

Hi Roosta,

First off, welcome to DPS and hope you get a lot out of it. We're generally helpful.. generally.

So.. the first thing I noticed, even from the thumbnail before opening it, is that the background is a bit distracting particularly the dark spot above your shoulder and behind your head. Background is one of those basic things that we often forget about when thinking of all these other things, like lighting. Don't do that. Don't even put the camera to your eye until you consider the background, it'll become second nature after a while.

As a big fan of lighting, I can appreciate the tought you put into this image. In the end, the lighting is off for me because of the very bright spot on your forehead, cheek, and nose. Had that been not so bright, the lighting could have been quite good.

In the end, it's a good portrait for things like Linkedin, but as a proper portrait there are a couple of small things, if correctly, that could have made this quite nice.
So, keep it up!

[roostabunny]

Awesome, thanks for the reply and the welcome, BigFuzzy!

Yeah, after-the-fact, distracting background and harsh lighting were the main things that bothered me. I'm reading Light - Science and Magic (awesome! highly recommend though if you're into lighting you've probably read it already) and based on what I'm reading it seems like the bare bulb was too small a light source. I noticed the sharp shadows, but the harsh highlights you pointed out are probably the harder part to correct (if it can be corrected at all) after the fact.

I also thought the shadows around my eyes were way dark (I dodged in there quite a bit before posting). I thought about trying to reflect some of the main light from low on the other side, but I'm also wondering if I could help that by simply placing the main light a little lower. What do you think?

Also thinking about trying again with some kind of diffusion panel in front of the lamp.

And by way of my own background, portraits are the type of photography I'm most interested in, I've got almost no budget, but I'm fairly handy, so I've been lurking quite a bit over at DIY Photography.com. Taking my niece's senior portrait next month and ripe for any tips that'll help.

Thanks again!