First attempt at Portraiture

[jkshyt]

Hello everyone,
I usually prefer to capture landscape images. Recently I've gotten interested in portraiture.
This was my first real attempt at a portrait. Please feel free to leave comment, C&C welcome.
Thank you in advance.

_A748067 by jk Sullivan, on Flickr

[DanK]

We have a few experts on portraiture here. I am definitely not one of them. However, I think a main issue here is basic: relative light and dark.

you presumably want the viewer's eyes to be drawn to the face, particularly the eyes. But the face is in shadow, while much of the surrounding areas are bright. The luminosity of the whites of the eyes is about 30. The luminosity of the straw on the hat goes up to about 75, and the white sweater goes up to about 80. That's where the eye goes.

You can correct this somewhat with postprocessing. I'll paste a very quick and dirty edit that's just dodging and burning. But a better solution is lighting. There are many ways to do this to create different effects, but one way or the other, you need lighting that illuminates interesting features on the face.

[jkshyt]

We have a few experts on portraiture here. I am definitely not one of them. However, I think a main issue here is basic: relative light and dark.

you presumably want the viewer's eyes to be drawn to the face, particularly the eyes. But the face is in shadow, while much of the surrounding areas are bright. The luminosity of the whites of the eyes is about 30. The luminosity of the straw on the hat goes up to about 75, and the white sweater goes up to about 80. That's where the eye goes.

You can correct this somewhat with postprocessing. I'll paste a very quick and dirty edit that's just dodging and burning. But a better solution is lighting. There are many ways to do this to create different effects, but one way or the other, you need lighting that illuminates interesting features on the face.

Thank you for chiming in! Do you think a reflector below her face, say on her lap, would've helped?
I used natural light by the window and bounced a flash off the ceiling to help with the backround shadows.
I think I had her sitting to close to the wall behind her.
I see where the light gets lost under the hat.

[rpcrowe]

One thing that I usually prefer in portraits is to have the eyes looking in the same direction that the nose is pointing. The eyes looking off the center of the nose seems to give a "shifty" look to the portrait. Of course, that is just my personal opinion.

The lighting in your portrait, as mentioned, is a bit of a problem since the areas around the eyes are a bit darker than the rest of the face and considerably darker than the white sweater.

My eyes are attracted to the brightest areas of an image but, I prefer my attention to be attracted to the eyes of the subject. As demonstrated above, this can be remedied a bit in post processing but, the things I like to do with a portrait are:

#1. Avoid hats with wide brims that cast a shade on the eyes. If the hat is worn, tilting the hat back will allow light to illuminate the areas of the eyes.

#2. If the subject needs to be wearing a hat with a brim and cannot wear the hat towards the back of the head (this often happens with portraits of military personnel in uniform) pumping some additional light (with a reflector or an additional light source) will clear up the shadows beneath the hat brim. However, we need to be careful when doing this - too much light from below will result in sort of a Halloweenish look.

[jkshyt]

One thing that I usually prefer in portraits is to have the eyes looking in the same direction that the nose is pointing.

Excellent point! I can appreciate that the more I look at the image.
This may have worked better.
_A748070 by jk Sullivan, on Flickr

[rpcrowe]

I copied the above image and did the following:

#1. Cropped the subject a bit tighter to remove some of the white sweater
#2. Dodged around the eye area and under the hat brim
#3. Lowered the brightness of the sweater
#4. Brightened the teeth a bit
#5. Dodged beneath the chin a tad



BTW: The dodging also smoothed the skin a bit...

This was a quick fix - I would have left more room at image left for a final fix.

[DanK]

Jack, for a lot of people shots, certainly for a lot of candids, bouncing flash off the ceiling or a white wall is a very useful technique, used a lot by photographers working wedding and other events. I to this a great deal, although I use a bounce card (in my case, a Demb flip-it) to cast some light directly forward to give some life and catchlight to eyes and to avoid shadows under eyebrows. In this case, however, the brim of the hat gets in the way: using light bounced off the ceiling casts the subject's face into shadow.

Dan

[rpcrowe]

Not to beat a dead horse but,I agree with Dan above. A bit of post processing will usually benefit any image, especially portraits but, it is far better to get it right in the camera when shooting. A hotshoe flash can be used in many ways to improve images. As with Dan, I also use a Demb Flip-It but, even an index card attached to the flash will direct a portion of the light forward.

[DanK]

PS: I didn't post any images to illustrate because my candids are almost all of kids, and I never post pictures of kids publicly without parental permission.