What’s Your Preference?

Shane Willis · #1 (**permalink**) 12-07-2011, 05:43 AM

I shot this photo of my wife the other day and was curious about what everyone thinks. Also, more specifically,Ii'm unsure of the composition. I like the tighter crop, but I feel like cutting the top of her head off is a bit distracting, and I'm not sure if the gray background would look better white or not.
Thanks

Exif
Nikon D7000
50mm 1.4 Lens
F/3.2
1/125
ISO 200
No post processing beyond lightroom 3.5 standard raw conversion

wal · #2 (**permalink**) 12-07-2011, 11:48 AM

Great portrait.. like the lights. No issue on the crop and composition. But maybe needs some softening on the skins.. as the make-up kind of make the skin looks a little bit plasticly (IMO)

graciousness · #3 (**permalink**) 12-07-2011, 12:41 PM

Gorgeous wife! How lucky are you to have married such a gorgeous woman that your camera loves!

It's not a bad photo, as a matter of fact, it's a good photo. What lighting did you use? I can see some tiny bit of blown out highlights on her eyebrow and the forehead above that which is a little tricky if you want to post process and adjust exposure. I do really like the character and the feel of what this image is going for and just needs some tiny adjustments.

Usually a chopped head doesn't bother me at all. This one doesn't bother me, however, because this is a posed shot and the red and her image is so striking, having her full head would have been better where you can see all of the shawl. Needs some space above her head, really. But it's a minor thing and some people may think it's just fine.

Her make-up. The problem with this and why the lighting exaggerates the issue is that her foundation is not even, where her face is different tone (more white pink) than her neck. She really needed to have put the foundation on her neck and exposed skin bit to make it all even. It's obvious that she is going for the lighter, goth look (as all goths do including me when I was younger, hehe), but with portraits like this, an even, overall skin tone is critical. I'm sure there's a way to adjust this in photoshop, I jsut don't know how to. But I'd do it if I could.

Some skin smoothing (only a tiny bit) should be done as with all women, our skins are not perfect

I'd also retouch a couple of tiny blemishes on her face.

I would highly recommend to do some post processing on this as it's a great shot and could be amazing with just some tweaks here and there.

Cheers and keep shooting!

Grace

sk66 · #4 (**permalink**) 12-07-2011, 03:28 PM

Interesting picture, Beautiful wife and gorgeous eyes.

IMO, if you are going to crop into the head, it's usually better to do it harder and "with purpose".

White balance is off.

Lighting is a bit too harsh

Here's an edit with a few "fixes". Adjusted levels/wb. Did shadows highlight recovery layer. Gaussian blur layer (erased eyes/mouth). A little work on the eyes, and harder crop. (all layer work had their opacities adjusted/reduces)

Shane Willis · #5 (**permalink**) 12-08-2011, 04:37 AM

First off, thanks everybody for the the compliments to my wife, I really couldn't have asked for a better woman. (I had to brag)
One of the reasons I posted the pic without any PP was just to have it critiqued as an image straight out of the camera. That and my photoshop skills are next to zero, I just purchased lightroom and it's the first software I've ever used with any photo editing capabilities.
The lighting I used for the photo was 20 watt soft white CFL in one of those $6 aluminum utility lights.
Sk66 what was your white balance set at in the edit. Lightroom showed mine at 2850, I thought it felt a bit off, but I figured it was just the red cast from the fabric. I loved the crop though, and it eliminated the gray background problem as well.
Graciousness, my wife has never been gothic, we were actually sitting around bored when I suggested she put on gothic make up because I had this idea. . We had to google to even find out what it really looked like. I was actually hand holding the light high off of camera left because I didn't have any other options.
For a spur of the moment thing I'm happy with how it turned out. I'm planning to develop the idea a little further so I really appreciate everyone's input, hopefully I'll be able to post the newer pics soon.

sk66 · #6 (**permalink**) 12-08-2011, 05:09 AM

No idea what WB is set at...I used PS and the levels tool. Used the white eyedropper on a white "highlight" in her eye ad the black eyedropper on a pupil, reduced white output from 255 to 245...that usually works quite well.

autofocus · #7 (**permalink**) 12-08-2011, 05:30 AM

Shane, your wife is lovely, and considering your choice of lighting you did very well. I had fun giving her a 40's glamour look, I hope you don't mind me playing a little on my laptop

Shane Willis · #8 (**permalink**) 12-08-2011, 03:53 PM

I don't mind you playing with it at all. Did you use a red filter effect to get the veil so light?
How would I go about smoothing skin using lightroom?

autofocus · #9 (**permalink**) 12-08-2011, 04:19 PM

Shane, concerning the skin smoothing I don't use lightroom, so I would not be able to tell you if it supports what I did in PS. A while back I had posted a tutorial on the process of selective sharpening and selective softening. It's a layered / masking process using the high pass filter for sharpening, and inverting it for skin smoothing. I'll dig up the link and post it for you on my next post. Again, I don't know if lightroom supports those functions or not. As far as the b/w conversion (which was done after I did some of the edits to the color version) I used the black and white conversion tool set to maximum white, and followed by adjusting the red channel. Not totally happy with that, I did some subsequent levels and contrast adjustments to get a more 40's like look.