Moonligth

[Javier]

[DanK]

I like this, but it raises a question that people argue about: how "blue" should nighttime or blue hour images be?

Some people insist the white balance should be made neutral. I don't agree. I think doing that often loses the nighttime feeling. However, I thnk this is too blue. I tried playing around with the white balance. I created a "neutral" white balance by using the whites of the girls eye. I found that somewhere in the middle, between that neutral WB and the blue you have in this image, looked better to me.

Just a matter of taste, I suppose.

For example, for this version, I left the magenta/green axis alone but moved toward yellow a little bit more than halfway between yours and a neutral version. I might go a little warmer.

[Manfred M]

+1 to Dan's comments. I agree that the photographer should skin tone to help set the mood. Even in "normal" lighting I tend to bias skin tones so that they are slightly warmer than neutral as I find that people look better that way.

I tend to not like when parts of the subject fades into the background and in my own work try to get a bit of separation. I would either place a larger reflection just out of frame on the camera right side to push some light onto the right hand side if space is tight, otherwise I would put a fill light there to accomplish the same thing with a bit more control. I've opened up the shadows as far as I could without introducing a lot of serious artifacts.

I would also look at cropping the top of the image a bit, you don't need that much headroom and cropping will give your subject more presence.

[DanK]

I agree with Manfred about both all of these points.

I don’t often do portraits (although a did some this weekend), but I do a lot of candids of people, and I often spend a lot of time tweaking skin tones. Like. Manfred, who unlike me is an experienced portrait photographer, I generally end up a little warmer than neutraL. In this case, I don’t think I would go that far, but I would definitely warm the image somewhat.


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