Merve - portraits on the beach

[AlexCascatau]

Just had a photoshoot with this wonderful girl on the beach, I wonder what the CiC Community thinks about [these two shots at the moment]. More to come . Oh and by the way, I used a D90 Nikon with the good old 50mm f/1.8 AF-D and all processing was done in Lightroom 3.

[kdoc856]

Hi Alexandru

I've little portraiture expertise, so take these friendly observations for what they are worth. I'm commenting primarliy because I look and think harder when I've invested myself a little bit in learning from other's images.

Beautiful model. I like the high key, the exposures, the lighting, the DoF and the background choice.

Problems I see: the distractions in the background: the boat and the bystander's head over her left shoulder should be cloned out. The horizon is bisecting her head in the top image, and because of the breaking wave the luminance reduces the contrast across her backside (definitely a shame in this particular case), the right hand pose is a little claw-like rather than relaxed. In the high-key shot, I don't know what the green and grey hued objects are and dont feel they add to the shot.

I hope this doesn't sound lilke I dont like these images. I do and think they are close to be very good. I'm anxious to hear what our more experienced portrait people think

Cheers,

Kevin

[AlexCascatau]

Don't worry, that sounds like exactly the kind of critique I was looking for! Thanks, those are some good points where I can improve these two images.

[Geoff F]

To some extent, I think any suggestions on the first shot depends on your intentions. Having some other elements at the edges breaks up the scene and appears more like a casual quick photo than a formal 'glamour image'.

Something along the lines of a 'girl next door' photograph.

I'm reasonably happy with the horizon; it has to go somewhere.

I agree with the breaking wave being distracting as it is. A couple of seconds later and it wouldn't have been a problem - but that's life!

Personally, I would like to see the high key version cropped tighter to become just head and shoulders and processed to give slightly darker shadows; which means more contrast. At the moment it looks a bit 'washed out' to me.

[rpcrowe]

I am not bothered at all by the background head (which could easily be cloned out) and the boat (same thing) and the wave, is just one of those hings that happens. If you shot more than one exposure of each shot, you may have one without the wave intersecting her rather pretty bottom.

What bothers me in the first shot is the two white sails of cloth material fluttering at the left and right. They trisect the image into thirds and I had to lok for a while to figure what they were. This distracted my attention away from your gorgeous subject.

I don't like the second shot. Rather than being high-key, it is simply overexposed. IMO, a high key image needs some darker areas (quite often the eyes of the subject).

[speedneeder]

The first one I like except for her glasses being crooked on her face.
The second one I agree with Richard - just looks over exposed to me.