It seems fairly apparent that you didnt use a black backdrop and changed it after in photoshop. There is a bit of a halo effect around most of the body and you missed it down at the bottom around his legs.
Wow, yeah this is a great portrait in my mind. Care to talk a little bit about about the lighting you used, umbrellas, etc., and the PPing? I love the shot!
This was shot in the hallway of my apartment building. Alienbees. Shoot through umbrella camera left, slightly behind, pointed down, silver reflective umbrella camera right, slightly in front, pointed down, and a couple silver reflectors for fill.
The background was very dark because of the light fall off, but the concrete floor he was standing on was still gray. I pushed everything a bit to make it consistent throughout.
Halo aside, you still have few blotchy spots in the BG. In the most recent shot above my post, you'll see some "grey" background elements just above the hand that is holding the guitar. I used to run into these sort of problems, back when I was using Darker CRT monitors to edits. My shadows always looked deeper to me than they were. Could you monitor not be revealing enough for you?
By, the way the shots are very nice, and I fully appreciate the what it is like to shoot in a hallway or dorm room. Been there, dude.
(edit: what I am seeing also looks pretty to have some pretty strong jagged edges, so could be a compression thing, but I still think is happening do to the darkness not being applied consistently to all of your BG)
I'm editing in the school labs on calibrated apple displays; I just printed and didn't see any of the gray spots you mentioned. It could be the black point on your monitor?
I've struggled to break away from the white mouslin/ hot white - being the only background that I have. I feel that in these I was finally able to use the environment/ vastness of space to my advantage. I also bought a 750 watt dc>ac inverter yesterday, so hopefully I'll be able to take the 'bees on location.
I think it would be worth it to either 1) fix the halo affect or 2) make it larger around the body as it gradually fades darker to the outer portions of the photo.. but I think for how you have it now you should probably just clone it out or something. As for the 2nd photo, I really like it and the red-mahogany the guitar adds to the white and black of the picture, but I really find it distracting the guitar falls out on the left side -- granted, if you wanted to keep the photo up close, you can't really help that... but my eye is just distracted with the left edge of the photo while looking at his face. Still nice, though
Yeah, I this one is now my favorite.. great pose, lighting, editing.. all that mumbo jumbo. There are some halos are the very bottom, but nothing I'm concerned about -- didn't know if you did or not. I can barely notice it, really. What was your lighting setup/info?
