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 p.38 #9 · Portrait and People Image Thread using Sony | |
Like others have mentioned, softening the light is the best thing you can do for specular highlights. In post, there are a plethora of ways to mitigate specular highlights. Ask 20 portrait photographers what the best method is and you will probably get 20 different answers. My preference is to use frequency separation to isolate color/luminosity from texture and use the mixer brush on the former layer to gently “push” a bit of color/light from the surrounding areas over the nasty highlights. It’s actually a fairly quick process and I’d be happy to give you some pointers on setting up your layers and brushes when you feel ready to hop into Photoshop for retouching. Dealing with texture is the more tedious aspect of frequency separation retouching in my experience.
Color temperature mismatches when mixing light sources can get complicated quickly. The “best” way to solve that problem when mixing ambient and flash is to gel your lights to match the ambient color temperature and then use your camera’s white balance to neutralize the color shift. There is some good info about this on Strobist. Other than that, you will have to make local adjustments in post.
With regard to background spill and subject separation, increasing the distance between the subject helps, feathering the light so less of it is hitting the background in your composition helps, and using a softbox perhaps with a grid instead of an umbrella will help as well. In a tight space where all else fails, darkening and de-saturating the background in post can be very effective and is something I am doing more and more frequently. Even darkening the bg by a third of a stop and reducing the saturation by 15% can make a big difference in drawing the viewer’s eye toward the subject. For an adjustment as subtle as that, you usually don’t need a super precise selection. In Lightroom, you can try using any of the local adjustment tools combined with the range masking feature to try to isolate the background from the subject as best you can, and then use a brush to manually refine that selection. It is considerably easier to do when you have less background hues overlapping with your skin and hair tones and it is easier to do in Photoshop IMO, but again you don’t need to be ultra precise with fine bits of hair.
Finally, as you have already surmised, I think posing is hands down the most challenging and important aspect of portrait photography. From a technical standpoint, you need your model oriented in a specific way to achieve the lighting you want. But more to the point, you can do everything else right and if the pose isn’t communicating something, the shot won’t be either. This is something I’m constantly struggling with, analyzing and learning about. The most important thing is to communicate, even if you’re not initially sure what you want and even when you are thinking about 100 other things. Just keep mixing things up, make small adjustments to head and hand positioning, and be very very encouraging when something happens that you like and then try to refine from there. Just say that was so amazing when you just did this with your hand or tilted your head that way or when your lips were a little more open, etc. Show them the shot on the back of the camera if you took one. Another very simple thing you can do is just count to three before each shot. This helps your models know when they can blink or relax a bit, and it also keeps you talking constantly, which helps to avoid awkward silences. At the same time, make sure to snap a few shots in between poses and counts. Sometimes the shots where the model isn’t posing ultimately make for the most interesting images!
Most importantly, have fun and keep learning!
Cheers,
Matt
abadger wrote:
You guys are awesome for knowledge sharing. Thank you for the detailed reply!
I am up to the beginning of lighting 102 in strobist. It is a great resource and the real issue is not letting all of that knowledge go out the window when you are in the heat of things shooting. Heck, I had lighting stand knobs and washers rolling on the ground due to relative unfamiliarity with setup and rushing even though I had done it a few times successfully before. Just nerves and wanting to remember everything correctly and act professional. (Luckily nobody really noticed, I don’t think). But at that time I didn’t have the ‘muscle memory’ of what angles were optimal, how to balance what modifiers and where etc. I read about it, but it wasn’t second nature because of lack of practice in these scenarios.
In fact one of the harder things I noticed shooting a (less experienced) model was the confidence I needed to have in direction of the model’s posing that I simply didn’t have at the time. So all of that ended up with this beginner’s result, which I hope to build upon.
Critiques noted on all of the above. I will try out B+W on #2 and also got the color to be somewhat better with a little more editing. So perhaps will share updates later When finished if I like the results.
For #3 yes it was an umbrella, we were in a tiny stairwell and there was only this little window that didn’t have a bar next to it or the outdoor window lighting from halfway down the stairwell. So these are also not optimal studio conditions, though certainly noted about getting the model away from the wall. When I tried that it just included too much surrounding stuff that I didn’t want in the picture. Perhaps I could use a grid for that scenario to avoid spill?
Have followed the thread and site for a little while now and love what Joshua and Gabriel do (among other talented people in this thread). Really high level stuff. For me right now it’s just honing the basic technique and then can branch out later. I’m certainly not ready for anything serious just yet. Don’t want to embarrass myself. But this kind of feedback is incredibly helpful so again, wanted to say how much I appreciate your response.
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