"School of Portraiture" - Lesson 08 - Taking it to the next level ("The Reunion")

[allenlennon]

Hi all, the other weekened i did a photo shoot of a friend for her aacting portfolio, she is really happy with the outcomes, and the following are a few photos of the shoot.


_MG_2865 copy by AllenLennon, on Flickr


_MG_2859 copy by AllenLennon, on Flickr


_MG_2876 copy by AllenLennon, on Flickr
this one is my favourite.

Cheers

[Tony M]

After a long summer break, I've finally got my model/daughter back in the "studio", ready for another attempt at some portrait photos - this time applying Colin's advice after my earlier attempt in May.

Below is the result.


I used a remote flash (Canon 580EX II), mounted on a stand with a shoot-through umbrella. It was situated to the right of the camera. The background is velvet. I used a grey card to set the white balance. I forgot to over-expose by 1 stop, as Colin recommended. I instead increased exposure in Lightroom, and reduced highlights to bring the skin tones down. That brought out the hair nicely. Other post-processing consisted of: reduced clarity to soften the skin; increased clarity around the eyes to compensate; whitened the eyes and removed (faint) red veins; whitened the teeth slightly and reddened the lips slightly.

So how does it look? The original RAW file is here in case anyone wants to compare with it, or show how I can improve on the PP.

And here is another one, which was processed in a similar way to the previous one.

[DeepWater]

[IMG][/IMG]Hey Allen
Here is one of your shots back with just a tad of color correction in CS6 - see what you think. I don't know what your lighting was like, so I may be wrong but it seemed to me that there was a tad too much of a couple of colors so I took the liberty of downloading your shot and tweaking it. See what you think
James

[Tony M]

Allen,

What type of material did you use for the background? I notice that it is a purer black than mine. Mine doesn't print well at all; there is a different shade in the upper part, which makes it look washed out.

Tony

[allenlennon]

Tony I believe it's polyester fleece? I forgot the name. But it's a good fabric. It dosnt wrinkle as easy but when it does you just hit it with your hand and it disappears.

[smcrews]

Hey there Tony,
You have a beautiful daughter and I love the shots (#1 is my favorite). The two things that I think could improve them would be...

1) a tiny bit more sharpening around the eyes of the first one
2) a different backdrop on the second one (and maybe a little more room between the model and the backdrop).

Hope this is helpful
Shawn

[Tony M]

Thanks Shawn for your advice.

I'll try the sharpening around the eyes; perhaps it was softened a bit when I was softening the skin of the face.

Moving the subject from the backdrop is definitely a good idea. In fact, it solved the problem of the black backdrop not being pure black: there was enough reflection of the flash off the backdrop to spoil printed images. (It took me a while to figure that out; I was doing test shots of my daughter throughout Sunday to solve that problem.) I ended up repairing this photo by removing saturation from the background; now the black prints perfectly. But it created an artificially and unnaturally smooth border between the hair and the background. So this weekend I'll hopefully get my daughter to smarten herself up for some more photos.

I posted the photo of the second backdrop to see if it got any comments. It's not my choice but my daughter and wife preferred it to the black one. It's interesting to get different opinions.

Tony

[grounded]

Just a grab shot.

[IanMc]

Hello. Here's some portraits of my sons on my first attempt at it.




And one of my wife!


Any feedback would be great!
Ian.

[Colin Southern]

Hello. Here's some portraits of my sons on my first attempt at it.




And one of my wife!


Any feedback would be great!
Ian.

Hi Ian,

First up ... what do YOU think of them? Strengths? Weaknesses?

[IanMc]

Hiya Colin. I was pretty pleased with the way they turned out for my first attempt and my two younger models were not very co-opertive. haha. Suppose they could probably be a little tighter crop and less light on the background.
I had two soft boxes either side of the "models" and a reflector in front of the camera pointing up to give more light.
Ian

[MannyG]

After a long summer break, I've finally got my model/daughter back in the "studio", ready for another attempt at some portrait photos - this time applying Colin's advice after my earlier attempt in May.

Below is the result.


I used a remote flash (Canon 580EX II), mounted on a stand with a shoot-through umbrella. It was situated to the right of the camera. The background is velvet. I used a grey card to set the white balance. I forgot to over-expose by 1 stop, as Colin recommended. I instead increased exposure in Lightroom, and reduced highlights to bring the skin tones down. That brought out the hair nicely. Other post-processing consisted of: reduced clarity to soften the skin; increased clarity around the eyes to compensate; whitened the eyes and removed (faint) red veins; whitened the teeth slightly and reddened the lips slightly.

So how does it look? The original RAW file is here in case anyone wants to compare with it, or show how I can improve on the PP.

And here is another one, which was processed in a similar way to the previous one.

Hi Tony. Love the first shot. Beautiful lighting for a one light setup. You might try a white reflector opposite the main light to soften the shadows and bounce some light onto the dark side of her hair. A secondary light on the background would also create some depth. I took the liberty of retouching your raw file. I photoshoped some light in the background and left the highlights as I think this also creates more depth.

[MannyG]

Hi Colin. I've enjoyed reading your teachings for quite some time now and finally decided to join the blog. Here's a photo I took a few days ago of my nephew. I like the overall composition but wish I would have positioned the strobe a little lower to avoid those un-natural looking shadows on his face. Just wanted to get your take on it. Thanks.

[Colin Southern]

Hiya Colin. I was pretty pleased with the way they turned out for my first attempt and my two younger models were not very co-opertive. haha. Suppose they could probably be a little tighter crop and less light on the background.
I had two soft boxes either side of the "models" and a reflector in front of the camera pointing up to give more light.
Ian

Hi Ian,

My apologies -- I think your reply scrolled off the latest thread page and I've missed it!

With regards to the first two images -- if you can't get the kids to co-operate then I'd probably shoot a lot wider and try to show them interacting with their environment in some way. If they could be bribed to co-operate long enough to get a shot then I'd probably try to plan a better background for the "encounter" ... in this case I found the checkered blanket to be somewhat of a distraction - the the pillow in the shot for the 2nd image isn't much better.

Would be great if you could get some fill light into their faces as well -- I'm really not seeing a lot more than just black holes where their eyes should be.

With regards to the 3rd shot, the two things that struck me first were the background and the lighting. Background to me is just too plain, and the lighting is too flat. If you can get some asymmetric lighting on your lovely wife's face then you'll be able to get some interesting shadows, which will greatly add to the portrait.

Hope this helps!

[Colin Southern]

Hi Colin. I've enjoyed reading your teachings for quite some time now and finally decided to join the blog. Here's a photo I took a few days ago of my nephew. I like the overall composition but wish I would have positioned the strobe a little lower to avoid those un-natural looking shadows on his face. Just wanted to get your take on it. Thanks.

Hi Manny,

It looks pretty good to me. The lighting pattern you've used is called "Rembrant", which works just fine with the contrast ratio you have. A fraction lower would have thrown a little more light into his right eye, but basically you got away with it. Light source placement is a lot less forgiving when working with hard light.

With regards to the composition - again - it's good. My only comment there would be to perhaps crop a little more off the top; usually space above a head contributes little to an image. Only other thing I noticed was that twig stuck to the fence -- little bit distracting.

All in all, great job

[Colin Southern]

My take on it ...

[MannyG]

My take on it ...

I left the twig because I thought it added to the composition but now that I see it gone I totally agree, it was distracting. Thank you Colin, your advice is very much appreciated

[Ashtyn Renee]

IMG_3781 by Ashtyn Simpson, on Flickr

I tend to think it's an okay portrait... the background is a little distracting, and I'm not sure if I should have cropped it closer than I did, and there is also hair across her face, which I didn't remove. Just wondering if you have any other thoughts?

[Cantab]

IMG_3781 by Ashtyn Simpson, on Flickr

I tend to think it's an okay portrait... the background is a little distracting, and I'm not sure if I should have cropped it closer than I did...

I'm not an expert, but I agree with you that the background to the right of the model is distracting. So I think a tighter cropping would help. One possible difficulty is that the background (sky) immediately above the model is lighter than the rest of the background.

Maybe someone with more portrait expertise will reply. But I think that with cropping, you'll have an attractive picture.

[kdoc856]

Ashtyn,

I think it's much better than ok, but that large bright defect in the background wall has to go. I'd try a crop just to the edgeof the intact wall, and a "little off the top" if you need keep your aspect ratio. That should take it from ok, to "darned good"