another portrait

[scully]

I like portraits where there is a lot of dark space.

[Manfred M]

Another nicely done dramatic portrait. This one should keep the purists happy as this is definitely a more traditional profile shot.

I personally like a bit more separation of the subject from the background (using a hair light) and a bit of toning down of the hot spots on the nose and below the eye. I do like the way you have sculpted the cheekbone.

The one thing that does look a bit strange is the size of the hands; they somehow look huge.

[rpcrowe]

I do like this portrait...

I selected the nose and the cheek with control points in NIK Viveza and reduced the structure quite a bit (smoothing the skin of the nose, and also reduced the brightness and contrast of those areas. It worked out pretty well.

The only thing that I can figure out regarding her hands is that her body was not in an exact profile and that the hands were closer to the camera than her face. If this occurred and if the image was shot with a lens of a shorter focal length, that might explain the larger hands.

However, I think that if the hands were selected and the brightness reduced, the size differential would not be that apparent...

[scully]

Thanks guys, on the hands, it isn't the hand that makes you think it is large it is the thumb and that is because there are two thumbs which look like they are one. If you look closely, you can see that the closest thumb is in profile and the one behind it is in semi profile. All of the colour you can see on the thumbs is the rear thumb, the front one is all in black.

To paraphrase Seinfeld, she hasn't really got "man hands".

[Manfred M]

Thanks guys, on the hands, it isn't the hand that makes you think it is large it is the thumb and that is because there are two thumbs which look like they are one. If you look closely, you can see that the closest thumb is in profile and the one behind it is in semi profile. All of the colour you can see on the thumbs is the rear thumb, the front one is all in black.

To paraphrase Seinfeld, she hasn't really got "man hands".

I think that this might be part of it, I suspect it is more the overall lighting and dark background. It reduces the boundary that defines the whole head. We really only see her face, most of the rest of the head is in shadow. so we are really comparing her hands with a partial view of the face.

[Loose Canon]

Hey Stephen!

Cool shot.

If the hands look too big maybe just get them a bit on the back side of the nose toward the back shoulder?

I can dig your low key approach and lots of dark space. No idea what you have available in your kit, but if you are not down with Manfred’s hair light suggestion, what would you think about a rim light? (I’m a bit on the “just a tad more
light to help define” school, but this is pretty cool)! A little bit more of her lit below the neck might be more balanced. But this is just some spitballing!

And not that it matters, but I would lose her right eyebrow hairs!

[scully]

Thanks Terry, in these shots I am a bit of a minimalist so my solution is less rather than more. What about this? It ditches the thumbs and also gets rid of the distracting hair on her shoulder.



or maybe even

[Loose Canon]

Then I would say it is just right if its just right with you.

I would lose the little white spots on the fingers/thumb though.

[Rebel]

Another nice one Stephen, I prefer the version without the hands.

[Shadowman]

Nicely done.

[IzzieK]

The last batch are good too but the last one though nicer has that white shadow in front of her face compared to the other ones tht are just normal shots. I like your portraits.

[mknittle]

All nice, but I am with Matt on the hands.

[Manfred M]

Compositionally, I like your crops and the image in the last one is certainly stronger. I still don't love the loss of shadow detail in the hair (top right corner), but I do understand that this is a re-edit of older image, so these are not images you can just go and reshoot.