I haven't posted here in a long while. I've been sincerely trying to practice and improve.
So I'm putting this image here for your evaluation and critiques. If you would be so kind to provide guidance as if as a studio owner, you sent me on assignment to photograph this young lady for her high school senior portrait. If these images were to be sold by your studio, would you have any reservations to put your studio name on these images ? Do you have any suggestions or recommendations for improvement ? Thank you for looking at these and providing your critques and suggestions.
The lighting was totally natural light, no reflectors, no flash.
If exif data is important to know -
iso-50, 1/125, f5.6 85mm 1.8, Canon 1dmkII
Randy Smith
Edited by RandySmith on Nov 26, 2007 at 07:30 PM GMT
I'll make two comments: on the portrait, can you get a hint of detail in her dress? On my monitor it's totally black from just off the front of the shoulder seam onward - I assume the fabric is velvet.
Second the only genuine smile I see is in the lower left hand corner image of the collage - imo the others look forced and she's not smiling with her eyes. I have an in-law who does exactly the same thing in an exaggerated fashion: teeth bared and clenched, mouth stretched into a red-lined oval and it looks unnatural as the dickens - remove the camera and we have a lovely, warm smile - sometimes you just can't win
The lack of a natural smile was the first thing that caught my eye. Otherwise I belive you have the pose and lighting down. Also the locations are nice and don't distract from the photo. One last thing the photo on the upper right corner of the collage looks a tad cool.
Bob Jarman wrote:
I'll make two comments: on the portrait, can you get a hint of detail in her dress? On my monitor it's totally black from just off the front of the shoulder seam onward - I assume the fabric is velvet.
Bob
There's plenty of detail on mine
The varying color balance on the collage is disturbing for me
these are good images especially the bottom right and bottom left of the collage... i agree that her smile in all the photos, ecept the two i mentioned, looks painful or forced... and the dark background with her dark shirt in the top left photo make the image seem very dark or shaded like it was taken in the last couple minutes of light... i think an on camera flash with a difuser would really brighten that image...
I don't like the bokeh... I don't know if it's from the settings or the post-processing but I would recommend using the high-pass sharpening technique and masking the background, even using that mask (inverted) on a gaussian/lens blur layer
I'd do the color balance on the top two, as mentioned, and maybee it's just me, but the hands on the right two portraits look awk. Also, the bottom left looks like it could be cropped to be more dynamic.
Overall, they look very good and I expect that she will be happy with them.
