Mexican Lady

[Javier]

[Shadowman]

Reminiscent of Frida Kahlo, nicely exposed and great detail/sharpness of the eyes.

[madcrow]

+1 for John's comments. Nice capture.

[Sergio M.]

Reminiscent of Frida Kahlo

Really does remind me of her. A wonderful portrait.

Sergio

[bnnrcn]

Nice image Javier I like the sharp and clear eyes . IMO her skin looks a bit too soft, may be because of your PP work?

[rpcrowe]

Classic features...

[Javier]

Thanks guys I really apreciate your opinions. Thanks

[Dave Humphries]

Hi Javier,

Interesting portrait, certainly sharp and, since I think it was taken by the room light, good white balance.

Most of the ideas I might suggest for a portrait probably arise from your small shooting space, so may be beyond your control (if only for this location).

I'll outline them anyway, since (being selfish) it will help me, perhaps yourself too and possibly other members.

I see a single light source, quite small, resulting in a fairly 'hard' (i.e. sharp edged) shadows (her nose and on wall behind).
The light source is a similar height to your Mexican Lady, only slightly higher, leading to my deduction it being the room light, this observation from the shadow angle from her nose (even with head tilt), eye catch-lights and that on wall behind.

The wall is a bit too close for comfort to your model, it would be better not to see her shadow on it, although if you had moved her away from it, it would be darker compared to her illumination (inverse square law at work) and that may have looked worse.

The one idea I think you might have been able to achieve, if this was other than a grab shot, would have been to add a reflector to lift the shadow depth from camera right. A bit of paper, or kitchen foil would have sufficed, although how it is held in position might be another challenge.

I could also suggest that the texture revealed along the shadow side of her nose might have been reduced if you had taken half a step left and she had turned her head to follow you, maintaining the same subject to camera angle, but with the light wrapping a tad more.

The slight angle she's standing at is intriguing.

I have built up a vague mental picture of the shooting location as to why certain things are the way they are - it would have been helpful if you had told us a few things about what limitations you had when shooting. If you haven't seen it you may find the first post in this thread useful:
How to Get Effective Feedback for your Posted Images, it may save me/us some wild guessing


I like the wide aperture and narrow DoF (no camera EXIF available), WB and your subject - for all my ideas, I don't think I'd have captured anything better - as you know, I'm no expert at portraiture.


For this capture; I do wonder what might be achieved with some localised adjustments applied in ACR, which you will have in CS6 and perhaps a slight overall brightening - but this depends whether you were going for an 'atmospheric' image for the location.

I hope those musings are helpful, Dave

[Javier]

Thanks Dave..