A formal occasion

[allenlennon]

Hi all. Some of you will recognize this girl from my previous posts. This was at her graduation formal with her fiancée. C&C welcome.


IMG_3704 by AllenLennon, on Flickr


IMG_3734 by AllenLennon, on Flickr

[ggt]

How authentic! I love the expression on her face in #1. I would work on getting ride of her tan lines. It's such a distraction, I know girls don't worry about it anymore. I'm old fashioned about it. Same with the blemishes on his face. Not what you'd want to see in 20 years when you look at yourself in a photo.

I love the action of her dress in #1.

Both are lovely compositions. I really like the colors in the background as well. Thanks for posting.

[Loose Canon]

Hi Allen,

Good stuff, man. And I recognize this young lady!

I don’t know how you feel about portrait retouching so I’ll just toss out a few things here and you can take it for whatever it might be worth…

If these were mine, I would have already gone with removing the blemishes on the young man’s face/neck in both shots. I think I would also remove the stray strand(s) of hair on the young lady’s near shoulder in #1. And maybe the same strand (at least I would consider shortening it) in #2. She has a little shiny spot in #1 on the tip of her nose that I would lose and I would probably reduce (if not remove) the lines (wrinkles) on her neck as well as those at her underarm. I might even go for some subtle face shaping for her just to see if I liked it. I would also probably do a little teeth whitening.

You have here the classic white dress/black suit situation. I noticed some shadows and highlights clipping in these. I was able to improve that a bit but it sure isn’t enough to be a deal breaker. Looks like you may have pulled the trigger when a little breeze tugged at the bottom of her dress in #2!

Allen, unless you are attached to the background in #2 it might be worth considering cropping #2 to lose some of the head and side space. It’s a great shot and it would be my opinion that there is too much space that isn’t the lovely couple! After looking at #2 I might have asked myself if I might have liked a little lower camera angle with it. Maybe around waist to chest level or so. I am also a big fan of subtle vignetting and I would have tried one with #2.

Brother Man, you have yourself some really nice shots of this lovely couple. I can’t even imagine them not being thrilled with them. And you’ve done what I think is a great job with these shots.

Please keep in mind Allen that I usually tend to be what a lot of photographers would consider to be overly obsessive (unless you are shooting for a magazine, which I am not) about portrait retouching!

You gonna shoot at their wedding, Bro?

[allenlennon]

Thank you ggt and terry. As for the advice on removing blemishes and such I am unsure of how to do it as my skill in photoshop is limited

[Loose Canon]

Hey Allen! No worries, man!

No one knows how until they learn it! It's pretty easy to do and I would highly recommend the technique for your portrait shooting.

I like using the healing brush tool and clone stamp.

Just google something like "removing blemishes in CS(whatever version you are using) or PSE(whatever version of Elements) and you'll get a plethora of hits. Or just google something like "healing brush tool". All for free! You can also use it for wrinkle removal/reduction and removing stray strands of hair, etc.

Here is a video I got googling just that: http://video.about.com/graphicssoft/...blemishes-.htm

Its the first tutorial I tapped after googling and there were a ton of them. Its pretty easy to follow and has a written transcript included. It also mentions wrinkle removal/reduction.