Lusiana - portrait taken in Fiji

[Jim A]

My wife and I met up with our daughter and her family in Fiji (from NZ) for a holiday. Just got back three days ago. Whilst there I took this pic of one of our waitresses, Lusiana. I have very little experience in portraits, so please don't hold back on your comments, as I want to learn.

[rpcrowe]

Is it my old man's eyes, this late at night, or is there the slightest bit of motion blur in Lusiana.

[Manfred M]

Jim - Richard is correct; there is a lack of sharpness here so either a bit of motion blur is the most likely culprit. A focusing issue generally results in part of the image being sharp and I don't see that here.

A couple of other things; shooting a subject flat on tends to make our subjects look wider, so a common technique is to have the subject turn in to about a 45 degree angle to the photographer and then get you model to turn the head back to face the photographer. It doesn't have to be a totally straight on shot of the head either.

Burning down some of the hot spots on the face could be worth looking at too.

Otherwise a nice start in portraiture.

[Shadowman]

I was going to say the image is a bit soft, it would help if you described how you went about taking the shot or was this just a grab shot?

[MrB]

Lusiana appears to be illuminated by an almost circular spot-light. Perhaps the image would benefit from adjustment to a more subtle and gentle vignette.

Philip

[Stagecoach]

My wife and I met up with our daughter and her family in Fiji (from NZ) for a holiday. Just got back three days ago. Whilst there I took this pic of one of our waitresses, Lusiana. I have very little experience in portraits, so please don't hold back on your comments, as I want to learn.

Hopefully Jim you had better weather along the Coral Coast at the Naviti than I was getting down the coast at Suva.

It's possibly camera movement in the direction of around 310 deg that has caused the general blur suggested by looking at the neckline below the right shoulder which appears sharpest. There's also something a bit strange with the catch-lights.

Anyway, I'm sure you got used to the 'Bula' smiles

[Geoff F]

The dark pattern on her clothing (bottom left corner) seems to be reasonably sharp so is that where the camera was auto focusing ?

[Jim A]

Many thanks for all your very useful comments, folks! Just as a bit of background, I noticed how nice this waitresses’ hair was. It was up in a bun, but with a flower, which set it off very nicely. However, I stuffed up and did not capture that. My wife, Judy, I got to hold a reflector, but found out that despite the fact we were deep inside the large restaurant, when I used the speedlight on its lowest setting, it was too much. This got me somewhat flustered. However I did get her to stand in front of one of the square supporting columns, thinking that the brickwork would be a good background, which is my one claim to getting things right.

Richard – You are correct. In retrospect, I should have checked my other images of her to see if one better, though this seemed the best in other respects.

Manfred – Next time I will place the subject at 45 deg, which also, in this case, would have had the outcome of showing her hair, which was the attraction in the first case. Festina Lente – “More haste less speed”.

John – a good question, which hopefully I have answered above.

Phillip – yes, I always try for a subtle vignette, but have got a bit carried away in this instance.

Grahame – yes, I can see what you are saying, however, one thing I did right was to focus on ‘her’ right eye. The catch lights, you are certainly correct, they have picked up multiple reflections from the many windows. Am not sure what I could have done to avoid that, other than to take the photos somewhere else. The ‘bula’ smiles, yes, the Fijians are a lovely people and great with children.

Geoff – what would be the unsubtle vignette.

In one other comment, I think I did pretty well –
In diminishing the lines under her eyes?
In brightening and sharpening her eyes, lips and teeth?

I will not do further work on the image, as I do not think it warrants the time, though it was certainly useful practice.

[Manfred M]

Manfred – Next time I will place the subject at 45 deg, which also, in this case, would have had the outcome of showing her hair, which was the attraction in the first case. Festina Lente – “More haste less speed”.

The body should be at 45 degrees, but the head should be turned to face the photographer the way she was looking at you in the shot. This slims the body, but you still get a strong shot of the face.

When you suggested that you used a Speedlight; was it used as a direct light? By this I mean sitting on the camera's hot shoe and pointed straight at your subject? Normally that does not provide particularly flattering light. You mentioned your wife was holding a reflector, what were you trying to do with it?

[Jim A]

Okay, thanks Manfred, will angle the body that way and the face towards me. It is a pity that I could not capture the best view of her hair that way, though.

I tried a speedlight first, on the lowest setting and bounced the light from the speedlight onto the reflector and which bounced onto her. However the result was too strong a light. The image you see was taken without any additional light. I could have tried the ceiling but is was not quite white, more of a lightish alabaster colour - whether that might have worked?

[Manfred M]

Okay, thanks Manfred, will angle the body that way and the face towards me. It is a pity that I could not capture the best view of her hair that way, though.

In that case, don't get her to turn her head back quite as much. Generally, you don't want to have your subject's nose cut across the cheek line, but you definitely don't have to do a straight on shot.

I tried a speedlight first, on the lowest setting and bounced the light from the speedlight onto her. However the result was too strong a light. The image you see was taken without any additional light. I could have tried the ceiling but is was not quite white, more of a lightish alabaster colour - whether that might have worked?

If the shot was too bright, why not stop down or cut back on the ISO?

Don't get too hung up on the colours of the wall and ceiling; alabaster is pretty close to white.

As a more extreme example, this is a bounce flash shot. The ceiling and wall I aimed the flash at were made of same warm toned wood of the wall behind the subject. Honestly, I find people fret too much about the colour of the wall and ceiling when bouncing the flash. It might not be perfect, but the some of the colour cast can generally be taken care of in post, if it's an issue at all.

[Jim A]

Many thanks, Manfred, that's terrific feedback. Your pic of the man and his tools is really great and demonstrates well!

[Shadowman]

Jim,

Thanks for responding to post #4, regarding flash, I find that shooting in TTL mode tends to minimize the output and probably would've given you good fill light. As you were with your wife you could've worked out the exposure issues using her as a model and then taken the photo of the waitress.

[rpcrowe]

I don't have the capability of extracting EXIF information (for some strange reason since I downloaded two programs which supposedly give me that capability). I wonder what your shutter speed might be. It could possibly be that you were using a very slow shutter speed and that there was enough light to register the camera movement plus the image from the flash. Electronic flash will stop subject movement but, only when there is not enough ambient light to capture the camera or subject movement.

I have seen this type of look when shooting moving subjects in the past when the maximum sync speed of the camera I was using was 1/60 second...

[xpatUSA]

I don't have the capability of extracting EXIF information (for some strange reason since I downloaded two programs which supposedly give me that capability). I wonder what your shutter speed might be.

The posted image has very little EXIF, definitely no shutter speed. Might be a Flickr thing ...

[Manfred M]

Might be a Flickr thing ...

Confirmed - it is a Flickr thing.

My understanding is that this was done by design so as to remove traceability of the images as a safety precaution; geolocation data is written to the metadata in cameras with this capability. A number of social media sites like Facebook have similar policies.

[lovelife65]

Beautiful lady, but as others have noted, blurry

[Stagecoach]

Motion blur removed by a technique I watched a video on a while ago. But as often the case with what I do, I can not remember every step I took so will play with it more later

[Manfred M]

Motion blur removed by a technique I watched a video on a while ago. But as often the case with what I do, I can not remember every step I took so will play with it more later

The look is somewhat like what I get when I use the Photoshop CC Shake Reduction filter. I've not had a lot of luck with it, even when images are only off a few pixels. I find that Topaz Sharpen AI is a more effective solution than the Adobe one. There are limits and artifacts are noticeable in large images with the Topaz product too, but it can save the occasional image.

This shot is really at the limit of what it can do.

[Stagecoach]

The look is somewhat like what I get when I use the Photoshop CC Shake Reduction filter. I've not had a lot of luck with it, even when images are only off a few pixels. I find that Topaz Sharpen AI is a more effective solution than the Adobe one. There are limits and artifacts are noticeable in large images with the Topaz product too, but it can save the occasional image.

Manfred, I went back and worked on the image (with yours on screen beside it ) whilst following the video tutorial and whilst I achieved a slight improvement on the one in post 18 it was nowhere as good as yours, ignoring any masking or local work I could possibly have done.

For info, this is the video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=US8yI3ymZEE

I then out of curiosity had a go using the 'Shake Reduction' and whilst I was reasonably happy with the face I found it just did not want to work with the beads and logo.

Fortunately I have not had an image for a long time now that I have needed to 'recover' but the above examples certainly show what can be done.