Disaster
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 Re: First post, shy subject | |
nolaguy wrote:
Hey Disaster,
I find it a pleasant portrait but here are the issues I see technically:
The depth of field is obviously super shallow. When shooting such nice, fast glass that\'s a temptation but unless the effect is intentional, it results in several distractions. Her right eye out of focus is one thing - most would say that if you\'re going to do that, you chose well in having the near eye in focus - but what makes it super distracting for me is (her) left eye and right brow in focus, right eye and left brow out of focus.
Hair strands in and out of focus - my eye is bouncing all around trying to find the intended subject.
Her skin tones are all over the place from reds to yellows to grays with the right side of the tip of her nose blown out or close to it. Personally I don\'t mind the latter but some would suggest backing off on that highlight. For me, I might tone down the reddish blush of her nose and lessen the dark circle under her left eye.
With such crisp focus, the mascara on the edge of her left eye lower lid - to me it\'s confusing. It would fit with a teary portrait but this shot feels more about soft beauty so it just seems messy and contradictory.
All in all, I think she\'s lovely... nice expression, composition and lighting - it just feels like a shot that isn\'t sure what it\'s supposed to be. The depth of field here is probably about a quarter inch, if that much. Had it been even an inch and a half - to me the shot would be greatly improved. Just my opinion. 
Lastly, it will be easier for us to view if you size the long edge to 800 to 1000 pixels at most.
Hope this helps and btw, I liked your self portrait in the other thread.
Regards,
Chuck
Really appreciate the feedback, Chuck.
The shallow DOF was intentional, for the soft look, with just enough DOF (F2.2) to get the lashes and iris in focus. I agree that wasn\'t enough. There ends up being two totally different looking iris\'s because her right one is just a blurry ball. This would\'ve worked much better if the OOF eye was in shadow, instead of actually in a brighter area of the photo...drawing one\'s attention to it.
It was the end of the day so her eyeliner or mascara had moved to her lid. I noticed that in post and should have cleaned it up.
I did intentionally lighten, again for a softer look, and then found the saturation was a little low so I pushed it...obviously too much. I think I had the vibrance and saturation sliders too high for the RAW conversion and then boosted it even more in post. That probably resulted in the color spread. I\'ve noticed vibrance, in particular, can put some unnatural orangy colors into shadow areas.
Thanks again. It is nice to have fresh eyes on it, so I can do a better job next time.
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