Eastern Oregon Girl

[EOBeav]

Another upload from my senior portrait session the other night. Just wanted your general thoughts concerning composition, lighting, and mono conversion. Thanks in advance for your helpful comments.

Yeah yeah, I know 17mm is pretty wide for a portrait, even probably for a full body shot like this. I was trying to take advantage of some lines in the picture, though. How much does that negatively effect the shot?


Eastern Oregon Girl by Rick.Scheibner, on Flickr

EXIF:
Camera Canon EOS Digital Rebel XSi
Exposure 0.013 sec (1/80)
Aperture f/7.1
Focal Length 17 mm
ISO Speed 200

[3bayjunkie]

its a good picture although she is lit pretty flat, looks like you used a flash. I think it would benefit from some softer natural light. The composition is nice.

[EOBeav]

Originally Posted by 3bayjunkie

its a good picture although she is lit pretty flat, looks like you used a flash. I think it would benefit from some softer natural light. The composition is nice.

She was facing a setting sun, and I used a LP160 shot through an umbrella, camera right.

[Michael_nine22.com]

Originally Posted by EOBeav

She was facing a setting sun, and I used a LP160 shot through an umbrella, camera right.

how far was the umbrella? If you look at the fence where her legs were looks like a pretty harsh shadow. Also look at her face, her hair makes a harsh shadow When I use shoot through they are often right at the edge of the frame/maybe photoshop them out a little bit,

Also what size of umbrella? I've seen few people with tiny umbrellas (20" ) and they just can't get the same look as a 40+ incher

[DanaLane]

In general I like this. It does look as though the fill you were using was pretty small, or pretty far away. I'd also consider toning down the fill flash a little and letting there be some modeling on her face.

With regard to composition, I really like the diagonal fence, but I would have liked to see it moved up out of the very lower left corner, so it didn't look like it was coming right out of the corner.

[Doug Sundseth]

I think the perspective from the 17mm lens isn't doing your subject many favors. But I do like the composition -- not just the nice diagonal, but the placement of the sky and background elements.

I think I'd try stepping back and zooming in to maintain similar framing while limiting perspective problems. I think that a higher shooting point might be more flattering as well, but I don't think you can maintain the current nice composition if you do that. Hard tradeoff, and one that I think I might make the same way you did here.

All that said, while I don't know that this is portfolio worthy, it's a nice, professional portrait.

[JFSanders]

I would second Dana's suggestions. I would think this would benefit from moving the camera to the right to get the fence out of the bottom corner some and maybe using a diffuser to cut down the light from the sun a bit. It would help the fill make a contribution to the image and would make the lighting less flat. And going up to 35mm or maybe even 50mm would help to give her some dimensionality.