Portrait concept and lighting

[billross77]

I took this photo of my wife on a whim. I used a brolly box with an SB800 on her right 45 elevated and a 33" shoot though umbrella with a 430ex ii on her right 45 elevated. Im not 100% on the composition, but it seems to work. My biggest wants are to hear opinions on the lighting and coloring of this photo. This was shot at 45mm f/2.8 1/200 ISO 100.

ps...if you know my wife, don't tell her I posted her pictures


Sara-17 by billross77, on Flickr

[Peach]

I like the bright yellow, it's cheerful I like the light on her hair too, it really brings out her highlights and she's nicely separated from the background. What's troubling me though is her face seems a bit...gray. It might be the monitor here at the hospital, but to me, her skin seems to be quite grayish.

By the way, I know your wife, I told her already :P She said she hopes the dog house is comfortable. (Kidding, I've no idea who your wife is and I'm all the way up in igloo land; aka Canada) hehehe

[Brookeabee123]

No I agree it is quite gray! She looks cold so I think you should warm her skin up lol And it may just be the gray of her skin but her iris seems a bit over edited??? But like I said that could just be from the skin.

[ccting]

If my wife knows i have her pics posted, she will kill me, so..

I like the eyes , and lips.. .. lighting

[billross77]

Thanks for the info. One of my biggest problems has been over editing. I did use lightroom to adjust the tone of her skin and her iris's. Ill see if I can tone it down a little.

[Life in Motion]

here's my quick stab at your photo. i think you did a great job. the image just looked like it needed a little boost to me and i added a little sharpening at the end as well. also the one thing that bugged me a little was not much seperation from skin color and lips, so all i did was add a little more color to her lips using a paintbrush on overlay but slight opacity.

really just slight changes to add more pop--good image to start