New Portrait

[fais54]

Please can you critique on lighting, and editing. I used an Olympus E-520 with a 14-42mm lens.


6.25.11 by Stefan Faison, on Flickr

ISO 200
Focal 31mm
f/5.1 1/60

[Bruce A]

Your model is very pretty and the lighting on her is great. The background is your problem, it's just too busy and distracting and with some exposure blowouts. Your dof should have been more concentrated on her. Just mho, but it's still a nice shot of her!

[Niresangwa]

Bruce pretty much covered the most obvious element here, which is to either place her in front of a more pleasing background than a wire fence, or adjust your settings to draw down the DoF and move her further away from the background, to take it out of focus...

the actual exposure on the subject is very nice however.

the second issue is the pose for me. I know you were maybe going for the 'staring into space contemplating the meaning of life' ambiguous look, but its looking too deliberate here, not a voyeuristic, stolen moment. Also be careful of placing the model into a profile position.. its rarely flattering, and because it's not engaging the viewer, prevents a connection.

composition-wise, there isn't much going on here. the rough-square crop, well, it doesnt add much. imho, you'd be better off cropping off the bottom third of the image, with a slice off the top and right side. this should get rid of the wire fence, blown section and also move her head to the right of the frame... then the staring into space might feel more comfortable. I'd probably crop tightly into her, making her face the sole focus.

[BigFuzzy]

Agreed with every thing said above.
Three points I'd make are:
1. It looks like you did some skin smoothing on her? I'm not a fan of it, as it jumps out at me from the screen. Maybe tone it down a bit?
2. Watch your sharpness, maybe it's a result of the PP work you did, but the image just doesn't feel very sharp to me especially in the eyes.
3. Not sure what options you have lens-wise, but these sorts of portraits would be much better (in my opinion) if shot with something that allows you to have less Depth of Field (ie wider aperture/small f/number). The busy details (in all the shots from this shoot in flickr) in the background pull away from the subjects in every shot to be honest.

[fais54]

Originally Posted by Bruce A

Your model is very pretty and the lighting on her is great. The background is your problem, it's just too busy and distracting and with some exposure blowouts. Your dof should have been more concentrated on her. Just mho, but it's still a nice shot of her!

She's actually my sister so thanks. To be honest, I agree with you on the background, but this was quick shot as we were finishing so I didn't really notice the wire fence until afterwards, but I still thought it was a nice shot of her.

Originally Posted by Niresangwa

the second issue is the pose for me. I know you were maybe going for the 'staring int space contemplating the meaning of life' ambiguous look, but its looking too deliberate here, not a voyeuristic, stolen moment.

I didn't really plan that pose, because we did a lot of other shots were she was looking into the camera, so I guess she wanted to try something different. I sort of like it because we didn't really get any profile shots, which I think can be pretty if done right.

About the cropping, I'm not sure how to crop it and get rid of the background (If that's what you meant), If you can sow me what you mean that would be cool.

Thank you guys a lot, this was really helpful!

[fais54]

Originally Posted by BigFuzzy

Agreed with every thing said above.
Three points I'd make are:
1. It looks like you did some skin smoothing on her? I'm not a fan of it, as it jumps out at me from the screen. Maybe tone it down a bit?
2. Watch your sharpness, maybe it's a result of the PP work you did, but the image just doesn't feel very sharp to me especially in the eyes.
3. Not sure what options you have lens-wise, but these sorts of portraits would be much better (in my opinion) if shot with something that allows you to have less Depth of Field (ie wider aperture/small f/number). The busy details (in all the shots from this shoot in flickr) in the background pull away from the subjects in every shot to be honest.

1. Yes, I did a do some skin smoothing in Photoshop. It wasn't realy necessary, but I decided to try it out. I agree with you that it was a bit overdone in this case. It was in the back of my mind, but it's good to hear someone else say it!

2. The sharpness was probably a mistake by me in the camera.

3. Right now I'm using the Zuiko 14-42mm f/3.5-5.6 kit lens and it's not giving me the shallowest DoF. But, then again I may not be utilizing it correctly. Any tips?

Thanks for your critique.

[BigFuzzy]

Originally Posted by fais54

1. Yes, I did a do some skin smoothing in Photoshop. It wasn't realy necessary, but I decided to try it out. I agree with you that it was a bit overdone in this case. It was in the back of my mind, but it's good to hear someone else say it!

2. The sharpness was probably a mistake by me in the camera.

3. Right now I'm using the Zuiko 14-42mm f/3.5-5.6 kit lens and it's not giving me the shallowest DoF. But, then again I may not be utilizing it correctly. Any tips?

Thanks for your critique.

With that lens, the best you can get out of it would be to shoot at 42mm and 3.5. Move your subject as far away from background as possible. That will give you the best possible DoF for these sorts of shots with the lens you have. That'll mean you'll have to move a bit further away physically of course.
Of course, that's my opinion only.

[fais54]

No, I agree with you...the shots would be a lot more dynamic with a shallower DoF, but I was just unsure of how to achieve those results with this lense. Thanks!

[BigFuzzy]

Originally Posted by fais54

No, I agree with you...the shots would be a lot more dynamic with a shallower DoF, but I was just unsure of how to achieve those results with this lense. Thanks!

Your lens, in the end, isn't going to give you a lot bokeh (or shallow DoF) because of it's focal length limitations. For nice DoF consider picking up the Nifty Fifty (50mm f/1.8) equivalent for your camera which should be one of the cheaper lenses you can get and you'll notice a big difference.

Or a cheap 24/28-70mm f/2.8 shot at 70mm & 2.8 would give you considerably nicer DoF/Bokeh.

Good luck!

[kmarie93]

Originally Posted by fais54

Please can you critique on lighting, and editing. I used an Olympus E-520 with a 14-42mm lens.


6.25.11 by Stefan Faison, on Flickr

ISO 200
Focal 31mm
f/5.1 1/60

I like this, she's very pretty Aside from what everyone else said, I think it would be nicer if you were facing her a bit more- not directly in front or to the side of her. Keep doin' what you're doin'! Have anything else I could look at?