Greyish skin?

[MattJohnRobinson]

I was pretty pleased how this came out, but I started to think that maybe I overworked the healing brush on the left side of her face and sort of sucked the shadow into her skin tone and made it look too grey. Is it just me? And is her face too bright?

The shot was taken only with window light using a monopod to steady.
Camera Canon EOS 5D w/ 24-105 f/4L
Exposure 0.02 sec (1/50)
Aperture f/5.0
Focal Length 60 mm
ISO Speed 200

[ajax_andy]

Only problem I can see is that her face isn't consistently lit and the top half is probably correctly exposed and the lower half over exposed.

You want people to be drawn in to her eyes, but because the lower part of her face is so bright the eyes immediately go to this area instead.

I really like the pic apart from this though and can't see any issues relating to your post production

[MattJohnRobinson]

Yeah you're absolutely right. I knew the lighting was a bit funny but didn't think about that part about the eyes in particular. Excellent point. Definitely part of why I thought the picture was a bit off. Thanks for the input. I have another one from this setting where I think the lighting makes some more sense because you can actually see where it's falling exactly...and though it's not evenly lighting her face I think it adds to the stylistic nature:

[baajero]

I really like the pictures I have been running into similar problems like the first picture. Basically I put my settings on spot metering and spot focus on the eye then recompose. This is what the pros advised to do here on DPS forums. The problem is the eye socket is on many ocasions a bit darker than the cheeks which means the cheeks will be brighter than the eyes. If I switch to evaluative metering... the eyes get less clear...

is there any advise on how to fix this without using very expensive lighting Studio type solutions. I tried a reflector and recomposing the model's pose but seldom was it useful... any camera settings trick that you can tell us about ?

[wejustin]

I like the lighting on the first picture better. Your eyes naturally go to the more exposed portion of the picture. On the first it is the face, on the second it is the neck. The difference in exposure of the forehead and face on the first picture isn't an issue for me but the face seems slightly over exposed. I like it.

[MattJohnRobinson]

Thanks for the input Justin. Yeah your eyes do go right to the neck, definitely...I feel like it's sort of seductive though, especially with the pose of her leaning back...you sort of just want to start feasting on her neck ;-) :-D I honestly was like hmm vampires would love this picture...probably because I just watched the new Underworld over the weekend...which I didn't like as much as the others.

Baajero, other than the things you already said (using a reflector to bounce more light onto the face and hopefully light up their eyes, or adjusting the head position to face the light more) I'm not sure what to tell you, sorry! For instance, with this window lighting, try positioning the model somewhere between the window and yourself, and use the reflector on the opposite side of the window...then both sides of the face would be lit up. I didn't do that here though 'cause I was just trying to use only the window lighting to see how it would turn out.