Hello

[ryanlikealion]

Please criticise this image - has it worked in anyway at all? New to portraits and b&w photography.

[brianxlt]

Originally Posted by ryanlikealion

Please criticise this image - has it worked in anyway at all?

Not sure what kind of critique you are looking for. You have left out all the important information as well as why you took this image. It is a very nice image of an elderly woman's eye, as in focus and clarity other than that I don't know. What is the image for? What was your intent? What were you looking for with this image?

[ryanlikealion]

Thanks for the reply.

Sorry for the lack of context/ exif info. I rushed the post earlier and forgot to post the date.

date 30/01/12 F = 3.2 SS = 1/125 ISO= 400 FL = 50mmLens EF 50m

I currently run a music therapy session for adults with learning disabilities and the group is called "Rhythms for life" - we are going to produce a book which will document the groups progress and the book will be illustrated with a photo story. Some of the shots will have the group members playing musical instruments where as others will be portraits.

I wasn't so sure about this shot - it seemed to look better "straight from the SD card" whereas when i put it in photoshop some of the definition disappeared. Maybe it cancelled out the use of a green filter or is that impossible??!

[brianxlt]

In this case if I understand what you are looking for than this image doesn't work I think. It doesn't show any indication of "Rhythms for life" and is not what I would call a portrait. You have cut her face off at a very unusual place. The image its self is of nice quality with need of a little more contrast, but other than that it looks to be in focus though a little tight on the one eye and well exposed. A more full face portrait image with a little wider DOF would be better I think.

[ryanlikealion]

Originally Posted by brianxlt

. What is the image for? What was your intent? What were you looking for with this image?

To answer the questions direct - the image is for a 'photostory project' documenting a music therapy session for LD adults. My intention was to take a portrait of this lady which wasn't a typical head and shoulders portrait - something that captured her curious character - without the viewer immediately thinking 'this is a lady with down's syndrome.'

From a technical point of view i am looking to improve on the quality of my black & white portrait photographs in terms of depth, contrast. I'm also looking to improve with my 50mm lens which i sometimes struggle with in terms of focus and controlling such a shallow depth of field. In this image i chose to go close in so that i could see if i could get the eye in focus.