Artist portrait

[ionian]

This is a portarait of Yorkshire-based artist Tom Ratcliffe, and was taken with a large softbox off-camera left to give a nice cross light and a Rembrandt profile. I'm happy with this, but I'm unhappy with the highlights in he glasses, especially camera left, where it is causing a loss of contrast. Suggestions for how to improve this in the future is welcome - is it just a natural hazard when creating this cross-lighting with a subject wearing glasses? I wouldn't want to reposition the head because the light profile in the face wouldn't work.

[Rent]

Get a cheap pair of glasses and remove the lenses

[chauncey]

I am a huge fan of shooting "Live View Tethered".
It gives one a great preview of the myriad of changes you might want to incorporate during the shoot.

[Mike Buckley]

I attended only to the glasses lens on the camera left using a dehaze tool. I then adjusted the skin tone in that area and the contrast on the area around the pupil. I did not attend to the reflection on the eye.

[Shadowman]

The highlights in the eyes aren't so bad, the issue is the reflection of the frames which makes the iris look extended. You can using a cloning brush to remove the extra reflection in the whites.

[bnnrcn]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AWUMrhvaNqs

This might be helpful for your portrait shots with glasses in the future

[Dave Humphries]

Hi Simon,

It is a case of light, head and camera positioning and something to ideally tackle during the shoot, tethering obviously helping with that.

If you don't want to alter the lateral angles of head to light (to maintain Rembrandt light), nor head to camera, I wonder if you can get the softbox any higher - it looks to be fairly level with your subject? (my thinking being that moving it up, should move reflection down, diametrically).

If he was standing, could he sit to allow more leeway for this?


Failing that, lose the glasses, or the lenses (as Roy suggested).

Mike's Dehaze treatment is very good, you could perhaps go a step further and clone the left (our right) eye's cornea and iris in to the other eye to restore a better sized reflection there (may need to be changed in size a bit).

HTH, Dave

[ionian]

Thanks everyone - some really handy tips here. Mike's pp approach has improved things but I definitely want to get it right in camera in the future so I will need to think about light placement and, perhaps more importantly, camera location. Slight adjustment if both, as Dave mentioned, could have eliminated the highlight.

[Mike Buckley]

I definitely want to get it right in camera in the future so I will need to think about light placement and, perhaps more importantly, camera location.

I'm not a portrait photographer but when photographing other subjects in my makeshift studio, I always first get the composition the way I want it and then I light it.

If you don't already have a copy of Light: Science & Magic, I heartily recommend that you get one. Once you become intensely aware of the family of angles and how to place light sources to avoid traps such as the one you fell into in this photo, no doubt you'll constantly be on the lookout for glare at the time of capture in the future.

[GBO25]

I'd also suggest making sure the lenses of the glasses are scrupulously clean and try a polarising filter. It might work.
Plus Dave's suggestion to move the light sounds good to me.