cgardner
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grafx wrote:
Hey Chuck,
Any chance you could post a couple of your best oblique portraits to get an idea of your reference and/or examples?
Here's an example I use to illustrate how small difference in angles make a big difference in appearance of the face. The subject is Barry Black, Chaplain of the U.S. Senate who was a guest preacher at our church last summer. The lighting is stage lighting with fill gelled with a 1/2 CTO.
In a situation like that I first scope out the dominant direction of the light and find a spot where I can shoot into the shadows and catch the face of the subject in both great looking 3D revealing short lighting and a nice balanced oblique angle. Preachers are moving targets who rarely pause and close their mouths and this was a near miss...
Nice lighting, but not fully oblique causing the far side of the face to disappear and the face look asymmetrical.
In this shot the angle is only slightly different but there's more of the face showing on the far side giving it a better balance right to left. For comparison I went over to the other side of the house and shot from the broad lit side of face. Notice how much rounder it looks?
The thing to realize about facial angles and lighting patterns is that there is so much variation in the shape of faces that its impossible to have simple playbook solutions. One of the pitfalls of learning with mannikin heads is that they are slim and perfectly symmetrical. Then you get out in to the real world shooting real people and find their faces are all over the map and few are as naturally good looking as your lighting crash dummy in the basement.
We all know an attractive face when we see one, but have you ever stopped to consciously consider what make you react to faces in a positive or negative way? That's way I suggest looking at each face profile-to-profile consciously and letting your brain tell you what looks most flattering. The main problem we photographers have is understanding on a conscious level the sub-conscious things we react to in person all the time.
There's also a need for a holistic approach and understanding that its CONTRAST not light that attracts the eye. Light and dark backgrounds set up opposite contrast / attraction dynamics. The real goal is to get the view to focus on the face. The first step is to help them find the face by contrasting it with the overall tone of the background and eliminating other distractions like clothing by the simple expedient of selecting a background the clothing will blend into seamlessly. Then its just a matter of finding the lighting strategy which will do two important things:
1) Make the front of the face, eyes and mouth contrast well with everything else.
2) Model the 3D features of the face in a realistic, natural 3D way by creating highlights on raised surfaces such as the forehead, ridge of nose, top of cheeks, mouth and chin.
Here are examples I use to illustrate the contrast / modeling dynamic:
On a dark background the contrast dynamic which defines the face is pretty intuitive. On a light background its less intuitive because its usually a combination of color and tonal contrast which pulls the eye to the front of the face. Then within the face itself there needs to be contrast of light and shadow to create the illusion of 3D modeling:
The modeling on the face in that shot was created with a single flash on a bracket to give the fill a natural downward angle which puts highlight on the raised surfaces where the brain expects them to be...
I complemented the OP on the lighting of his shot because the side of the nose is shaded which sets up the dynamic which make the patch of highlight on the cheek attract the most attention (if the light on the far side of the face doesn't distract more). If the patch around the eye is the brightest thing in the photo the viewer's attention is naturally drawn there.
Many shoot a profile where the angle is perfect but the light is too far forward resulting in the nose being lit up like a light bulb which make the nose the bigger center of attention.
As a final example, here's an oblique self-portrait of mine. I have a very narrow lopsided face and one ear which sticks straight out. So finding the most flattering angle was an exercise in relativity 
The ear sticks out on the right but actually winds up seeming in balance with the one on the left. It was shot from about 12ft at 200mm (equiv) from about 2ft overhead because that's the combination of vertical angle and distance I found was most flattering.
To arrive at my "best" side I did fun exercise where I mirrored both halves of an intentionally worst cast full face view, which are included along with the example above in this tutorial of mine for beginners: http://super.nova.org/DPR/CluelessToCompetent/
See what I said about the ear? It gets worse. Here are the two wide sides mirrored:
That even scared the dog...
Thankfully the mirrored right sides looked a bit better...
What was interesting about the mirroring exercise was that I'd looked at that face for 50+ years in the mirror never consciously realizing it was so asymmetrical or really thinking much about how best to mask it in the photo. That's one of the more interesting quirks about human perception. The more familiar a face is the less likely you are to look at it critically.
So there are no rules, just cause and effect. If your goal is to flatter a person the quickest path to the goal is to look at the face from all angles and let your brain tell you which is the most attractive, then let that determination guide your shooting strategy.
Chuck
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I see no need for surgery with liquify