Eyeball
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Hi Ron. I'm going to give you my straight feedback since I read where you're starting to do some wedding work and I think putting together the best gallery/portfolio possible is important for your business. Don't take these observations as me saying I could do better. I know it's tougher than it looks.
1. I think this and 2 are the strongest. If I was going to use this for my web portfolio, I would do the following:
- Clone out the white bars to her right, the white round highlight on the mantel next to her head, and the dark smudges on the mantel above her head to remove those distractions. I would be tempted to clone out the mantel ornament, too, but would probably leave it.
- I would clone in some of the fire from the piano shot and replace the bright fire blob that is there now. It's the brightest thing in the frame as-is and really draws my eye.
- The above suggestions could also be interpreted as "spend a little more time working the shot and looking for those background distractions".
- I would select the background, reduce the vibrance, and reduce the contrast to reduce the strong yellow/orange of the mantel and improve the focus on her.
- The angle of the shot sort of bothered me at first (realizing you were probably trying to fit her in the background) but I think the straight-on pose is the bigger sin here. It makes her look a little chubby and makes the image less dynamic overall.
- I didn't care much for the expression at first ( I thought it close to one of those "What is he doing with the camera?" looks) but it sort of grew on me over time. Has a sort of Mona Lisa quality about it.
2. Nice, straight portrait. I would crop it to 8x10 moving her to the right in the frame and add a very subtle vignette.
3. I think you saw some potential in this set-up and I kind of do, too, but as-is it misses the mark for me. If you are set on it, I would suggest the following:
- crop tighter, bringing the right side of the frame almost to her shoulder.
- soften the contrast
- bring back the detail in her bouquet
- add a subtle vignette around her and the bouquet
- play with color balance and b&w alternatives
- smooth out the blotchiness in her make-up on her left cheek
4. The weakest of the set for me. There are two main problems I see:
- she looks like she is busting out of the dress and the over-abundance of cleavage and upper-body skin makes her look much chubbier than she is. The white sliver at the top of her dress is also distracting.
- the lighting is too strong, cool, and direction-less. It just doesn't fit the mood of the pose IMO. You could probably do some things in post to improve the lighting a little but that won't help the pose and upper-body skin.
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