Blue Eyes

[klpurkett]

A very handsome lad! IMO, some type of fill light (reflector or fill-flash) might have evened out the exposure between the bright and the shadow sides of his face.

Thanks Richard. Yes, a reflector would have helped even out the shadows.

[klpurkett]

Here's the newest edit... Do the eyes look better? This time I tried to get the color to match a little better, and did not sharpen them. I also left the contrast in the image alone, and tried to remove the blueberry stain under his lip (though I'm not entirely happy with how that turned out...). Better? Worse? Beyond hope? Thanks again to all of you for the suggestions!

[jcuknz]

Thanks for commenting, John. I think on just about every single image I have posted someone has mentioned it being a bit soft. I am beginning to wonder why my images are soft, when I'm positive I am focusing on the closest eye. Could this be related to the inexpensive lens I'm using? Or would you suspect it's user error? This brings me to the rationale behind sharpening the eyes: I have received numerous comments on previous portraits saying the eyes could use sharpening, so I figured I'd try it here. Thanks for the critique... I'm leaning so much from all of you here on CiC!

Not sure what you are telling us here. I would still sharpen the whole image prior to posting as well as the eyes. The overall sharpening is to counter degradation in downsizing for the web and subsequent tinypix whatever they do.

Since the windows behind you were providing most of the light for the photo and the window right was over-exposing his left face so I think the suggestion to reduce the size of that window is valid from an exposure POV with the additional aspect that a smaller source is a sharper light source.

To improve what you have my solution was to make a selection with quite a lot of feather around the over-exposed side of the face and darken it, except this darkened the eye so that had to be undone. The warm tone on his right face isn't so noticeable when the left side is darkened. PSE#9 should be capable of all this.

Perhaps a quicker solution is to simply have one light source and use the on-board flash as your fill strongly reduced in power though this might not work with shots of the subject looking at the camera. My feelings at the moment is that modern cameras are very clever at working out the exposure provided they are given guidance as I'm suggesting.

[klpurkett]

Not sure what you are telling us here. I would still sharpen the whole image prior to posting as well as the eyes. The overall sharpening is to counter degradation in downsizing for the web and subsequent tinypix whatever they do.

Since the windows behind you were providing most of the light for the photo and the window right was over-exposing his left face so I think the suggestion to reduce the size of that window is valid from an exposure POV with the additional aspect that a smaller source is a sharper light source.

To improve what you have my solution was to make a selection with quite a lot of feather around the over-exposed side of the face and darken it, except this darkened the eye so that had to be undone. The warm tone on his right face isn't so noticeable when the left side is darkened. PSE#9 should be capable of all this.

Perhaps a quicker solution is to simply have one light source and use the on-board flash as your fill strongly reduced in power though this might not work with shots of the subject looking at the camera. My feelings at the moment is that modern cameras are very clever at working out the exposure provided they are given guidance as I'm suggesting.

Thanks for the explanation, John. I guess the biggest problem with this image is that I actually liked what I was seeing when talking the pictures, so I didn't change anything about the light. Had I been looking for more evenly distributed light, I would have played with closing the blinds a bit on his left and making sure the ones behind me were more open. As it was, I was mostly trying to apply advice from the Marissa thread on using short lighting to sculpt the face. I suppose I overdid it a bit here! I'll work towards finding a happy medium.

Thanks for the advice on pp, too. That makes sense.