Portrait Shots (show us your best)

[nwoods]

I like the high key shot. I need to learn how to do that

 

[photoman]

John- that 2nd shot is beautiful.
Your high key is a little too hot in my opinion. She blends right into the background in a few areas. Just a tad lower would provide that brief outline of separation.
The outdoor water shot is very nice too. Did you use flash or a reflector? Only nit pick is the dark areas beneath her eyes.

BTW- some great stuff in your galleries. :luxhello:

 

[photoman]

Aaron i really like that first B&W. Ah, to be 18 again.....

Thanks Nathan. You get my PM the other day?

 

[photoman]

Imnosaint- some great portraits and commercial work. Love the explanation you gave about chopping body parts. I always find it difficult to choose where to chop.

 

[john101477]

I like the high key shot. I need to learn how to do that

Thanks.

John- that 2nd shot is beautiful.
Your high key is a little too hot in my opinion. She blends right into the background in a few areas. Just a tad lower would provide that brief outline of separation.
The outdoor water shot is very nice too. Did you use flash or a reflector? Only nit pick is the dark areas beneath her eyes.

BTW- some great stuff in your galleries. :luxhello:

Thanks man, the high key was not actually set up to be a high key but with her outfit the available wall space I decided to go with a more commercial look rather than an all out portrait high key, but I do know what you mean. My first reaction was pretty much the same as yours. The original shot was perfectly exposed but I did not "feel" the shot the way it was created.
Ohh the water shot..., you know some days are just not designed or photography and between the light wind that popped up at the wrong time, light rain through out, and only one assistant doing video, my unbrella took a digger and blew that idea to pieces. I popped the hotshoe on a tripod with a lame diffuser. After a while it went on the camera because of the tough lighting and ran everything TTL which is where this shot came in. I could have brought the shadow out in post but felt that it added a bit of drama to her look. Over all I was happy with the shots but tropical storm Debby deffinitley played a trick on me... I was supposed to be filming a tutorial on shadows in harsh light with fill and reflectors...

 

[john101477]

John

Aaron, one of the great things about this page, is that you can get good informative feedback like you gave. After reading what you had to say I actually went back and looked at the ones I had picked to give to the models. Generally when I am shooting a person I try to keep it as close to what I was seeing as possible and for the most part that can be good but some people just have certain things that you miss that should be corrected. Such was the case here. I noticed that the youngest model continuously had dark creases under her eyes when I shot her on the level even when lit up. Quick fix but it was overlooked until you mentioned the darkness of Amandas water shot. Thanks!

 

[photoman]

John

Aaron, one of the great things about this page, is that you can get good informative feedback like you gave. After reading what you had to say I actually went back and looked at the ones I had picked to give to the models. Generally when I am shooting a person I try to keep it as close to what I was seeing as possible and for the most part that can be good but some people just have certain things that you miss that should be corrected. Such was the case here. I noticed that the youngest model continuously had dark creases under her eyes when I shot her on the level even when lit up. Quick fix but it was overlooked until you mentioned the darkness of Amandas water shot. Thanks!

Anytime! I hope that people continue to give honest but helpful feedback to everyone's images. There is obviously a skill set to providing quality feedback without bashing or being to general and there is a skill in receiving feedback as well.

Thanks for providing a great response as well. I know what you mean with bad days (lighting, poor model interaction, gear issue, etc) and missing things when editing. I have a couple guys that we routinely send each other recent shoots for critique and evaluation. We don't always go back and re-edit everything (as work might be TFP or a low fee shoot) but it helps with the learning aspect and top of mind for the next shoot.

 

[john101477]

We don't always go back and re-edit everything (as work might be TFP or a low fee shoot) but it helps with the learning aspect and top of mind for the next shoot.

Yeah this was a TF shoot itself but I do my best to put my best work out in hopes of it drawing more. Both gals were exstatic about their shots and after "tagging" both on FB, the name gets out better.
I am actually finding it harder and harder to get quality critiques. I have a few that send me their shots for evaluation quite regularly but few that I am able to send to with out getting the fake "attaboy" because simply they do not know any better. I try to be honest and upfront about my critiques but have on occasion gotten the "******, that was mean" after the person recieved all of their FB Praise from friends and family.

Hey how in the world did you get drop down menues in your smugmug page?

 

[photoman]

Yeah this was a TF shoot itself but I do my best to put my best work out in hopes of it drawing more. Both gals were exstatic about their shots and after "tagging" both on FB, the name gets out better.
I am actually finding it harder and harder to get quality critiques. I have a few that send me their shots for evaluation quite regularly but few that I am able to send to with out getting the fake "attaboy" because simply they do not know any better. I try to be honest and upfront about my critiques but have on occasion gotten the "******, that was mean" after the person recieved all of their FB Praise from friends and family.

Hey how in the world did you get drop down menues in your smugmug page?

I hear you about critiques too. I use to be on dgrin.com alot but a lot of photographers have left (not sure to where though) and you either get attaboys or the photoshop specialists which are all about shooting by the numbers, cloning, airbrushing etc.

I paid for customization on my website. I am no longer happy with my website and need to look into a complete overhaul. Need to search out someone again. Here is a list of people that have experience customizing the smugmug sites.
http://www.dgrin.com/showthread.php?t=188981

 

[john101477]

I hear you about critiques too. I use to be on dgrin.com alot but a lot of photographers have left (not sure to where though) and you either get attaboys or the photoshop specialists which are all about shooting by the numbers, cloning, airbrushing etc.

I paid for customization on my website. I am no longer happy with my website and need to look into a complete overhaul. Need to search out someone again. Here is a list of people that have experience customizing the smugmug sites.
http://www.dgrin.com/showthread.php?t=188981

Thanks for the link. I was always under the impression that whatcha get is whatcha get with Smugmug I just learned a cpl of new tricks yesterday that I hadnt seen before.
I try to get my exposure comp and light right in camera but I do look at PS as just another tool to get the desired look. I suppose all of us have certain things that drive us nuts. one of my pet peeves is cropping for wildlife shots or cropping because the composition was not right.
One of the things that stinks for me right now is that I came to Florida with the thought of only being here a short time and left all but 1 hotshoe, one umbrella, and one reflector in Cali. You get pretty creative when thats what you have to work with lol.

 

[Tucson T4R]

Da girls. My sister, friend, and wife at our rib feast last night.

 

[photoman]

Da girls. My sister, friend, and wife at our rib feast last night.

Brad- quick tip for skin tones. In LR or PS increase the luminance on orange and red. Increase saturation on green and blue - and you should end up with some more pleasing skin tones.

 

[Tucson T4R]

Thanks Aaron, I'll give that a shot. On this one, I just took the colors as they were using the Camera Standard setting in LR and didn't tweak them at all.

I appreciate the tip and will definitely check it out.

 

[Tucson T4R]

Aaron, OK I gave it shot. This version has the red and orange luminance and the green and blue saturation all equally up 20%.

To me, it did result in a better overall balance of the image. Do the skin tones look better to you now?

Thanks.

 

[Lost Canadian]

Brad they look good, maybe a touch heavy on the contrast and saturation but certainly more than ok for general snaps. Are you using a colour managed workflow? If so it might be worth your time to create a custom profile for your camera, or a number of them based around certain, common, lighting conditions, and take it from there. That'll give you the best, most accurate results. The Adobe DNG profile editor works good or a product like the color checker passport also does a pretty nice job. I have about 10 or so custom profiles made up for each of my cameras, each tailored to that specific camera and the most common lighting conditions I shoot in. It's easy enough to do, and only takes a couple minutes for each profile. I'm not a fan of the generic Adobe profiles.