Please CC my first adult portrait.

[43 North]

This was taken with my new Nifty Fifty lense I just bought. 50mm, 1/125, f3.5 iso400.

I am specifically concerned with:
1. The skin tone in your opinion.

2. Also have always had a hard time with sharpness in the eyes. If I remember right the focus was spot on the left eye.

3. Please CC on anything you want to about the photo.

This is also the first time my wife has allowed me to shoot her.


http://www.43northphotography.com/pictures/12-27-09.jpg

[kgb224]

Outstanding portrait captured by you.

[amberskies]

beautiful. The eyes look sharp to me, and I love how her eye colour matches her hat (it's the simple things!).

[43 North]

Thanks guys! I am kind of weird in that I WANT people to find something wrong with my work. Kind of a little OCD trait I inherited from one of my parents.

[Buddhanature]

She's a beautiful subject, I hope she lets you shoot her more. The eyes look sharp and in focus, and the skin tone looks fine. I really like the colors of the hat, the purple almost glows.

I understand about wanting people to find fault. If there's nothing wrong, then how can you improve next time?

[swilliams61]

Beautiful subject; beautiful portrait! You did an outstanding job with the lighting and composition. The only miniscule thing I noticed is that the catch lights in her eyes seemed a little big, but like I said...that's minor! Hope she lets you take more photos of her!

[ttosifa]

Originally Posted by 43 North

Thanks guys! I am kind of weird in that I WANT people to find something wrong with my work. Kind of a little OCD trait I inherited from one of my parents.

There is nothing wrong with the photo if you got what you want.

BUT, if this were my picture, I would want something different. So what I have to say does not constitute something wrong, but something different.

What I don't like about the picture is that it is lit. Everything is lit. Lots of light. Very little contrast, IMO.

Some people are afraid of having shadows. I like shadows. They show shape. The shadows in the pic above, IMO, are too close (in ratio terms) to the main light.

Just playing with the pic, I used a levels adjustment layer and ran the blacks up to about 36. This is something closer to what I would like (but done with proper lighting, rather than PP). In doing so, the face seems more prominent because it has higher contrast with the rest of the picture. In any case, it seems that some of your light possibly hit the lens and washed out the pic a bit, because the black slider doesn't start blowing out any channel until about 7 or so.

Hope this helps.

The original is a tiny bit overexposed in that the red channel is blown a bit on the face, but I think with deeper shadows this can be overlooked.

[43 North]

Originally Posted by ttosifa

There is nothing wrong with the photo if you got what you want.

BUT, if this were my picture, I would want something different. So what I have to say does not constitute something wrong, but something different.

What I don't like about the picture is that it is lit. Everything is lit. Lots of light. Very little contrast, IMO.

Some people are afraid of having shadows. I like shadows. They show shape. The shadows in the pic above, IMO, are too close (in ratio terms) to the main light.

Just playing with the pic, I used a levels adjustment layer and ran the blacks up to about 36. This is something closer to what I would like (but done with proper lighting, rather than PP). In doing so, the face seems more prominent because it has higher contrast with the rest of the picture. In any case, it seems that some of your light possibly hit the lens and washed out the pic a bit, because the black slider doesn't start blowing out any channel until about 7 or so.

Hope this helps.

The original is a tiny bit overexposed in that the red channel is blown a bit on the face, but I think with deeper shadows this can be overlooked.

I appreciate the comments. You are correct about the narrowing difference between the fill and main light. A short time later during this shoot I dropped the fill light one more step than what is in this picture. Seemed to help a bit to seperate the two lights. Also something that was bad in this shoot was the the umbrellas were very close to her, like only a foot. Next time I will move them back a couple more feet, this should help with the catch lights as well. Hopefully won't blow the red channel either. I found that I was at the end of my fill flash power, 1/128. If I physically move the lights further back next time I will leave myself more room to play with as I will be able to turn the power up a little bit more.

All in all I am happy with my first shoot, only other couple of portraits I have done were with my kids.

[43 North]

OK so I put the picture back in Lightroom and lowered the darks and shadows a bit and got this. Much better I think with the contrast. Thanks for you others that fixed the pic, that is what got me on the right path.

Here is the new one.

http://www.43northphotography.com/pi...27-09again.jpg

[ttosifa]

Originally Posted by 43 North

I appreciate the comments. You are correct about the narrowing difference between the fill and main light. A short time later during this shoot I dropped the fill light one more step than what is in this picture. Seemed to help a bit to seperate the two lights. Also something that was bad in this shoot was the the umbrellas were very close to her, like only a foot. Next time I will move them back a couple more feet, this should help with the catch lights as well. Hopefully won't blow the red channel either. I found that I was at the end of my fill flash power, 1/128. If I physically move the lights further back next time I will leave myself more room to play with as I will be able to turn the power up a little bit more.

All in all I am happy with my first shoot, only other couple of portraits I have done were with my kids.

I wouldn't necessarily say that having the umbrellas very close is a bad thing. Having the umbrellas close is going to give you softer light (compared to having them farther away) and will give you more falloff due to the inverse square law. Moving the umbrellas away will give you a different quality of light, which might or might not be what you want.

One thing that Benji (a frequent poster here) once said brought something from my intuitive thinking into something more conscious for me: It is often good to place your fill light on the same axis as the camera lens -- aka behind the camera so that it is in essentially the same position as the on-camera flash. I think this might've helped here. It will fill in the shadows and make them less dense, but done right it will help to preserve the highlight/shadow differences that give shape and form.

When you are at your lower power limits on your flashes, it might also help to increase your aperture number (e.g., from f/5.6 to f/8) to give yourself more room for ratios, or to use ND gels on your fill flash.

I personally never worry about specular highlights in the eyes if I like the lighting. On the other hand, if I find myself being bugged by the specular highlights in the eyes, then I also generally find that there is something about the lighting I don't like.

That said, I like the second pic much better.