From today's shoot

JAG

Well I think I am getting the hang of this portrait thing. This was my second portrait shoot for the theater and they have me penciled in to do more shoots for them in the future. So I must be doing something right! These are sample of female an male poses. What do you think?
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Shane422

I like the poses and it looks like you have your lighting positions and ratios looking good.

It does look as if you have gelled the fill light, or its a very different color temp. You can really see the yellow catchlight low in her eye. If so, its a bit too much in my opinion. I've seen it work well to gel a hairlight, but not the fill in studio. It just makes the shadows look a bit off color.

It also looks as if you have applied a Gaussian blur to your background, but have also caught the edges of your subjects with the blur. So you might be a bit more careful in your mask, or take care of it in camera by moving the background further back or use seemless paper instead of a fabric background.

JAG

Shane422 wrote:

I like the poses and it looks like you have your lighting positions and ratios looking good.

It does look as if you have gelled the fill light, or its a very different color temp. You can really see the yellow catchlight low in her eye. If so, its a bit too much in my opinion. I've seen it work well to gel a hairlight, but not the fill in studio. It just makes the shadows look a bit off color.

It also looks as if you have applied a Gaussian blur to your background, but have also caught the edges of your subjects with the blur. So you might be a bit more careful in your mask, or take care of it in camera by moving the background further back or use seemless paper instead of a fabric background.

Thank you so much for your comments! Actually both my fill light and my hairlight bulbs had burned out within minutes of each other and the only replacements I could get at the time was a 200 watt white bulb from the local supermarket! I guess what I forgot to do is change the whitebalance in the camera when it came time to actually shoot. But because of having to just run and get the replacement bulbs...I was lucky to have only a minimum of processing on these.

I didn't do a blur but I did use a burn tool to take the shadows out of the fabric in the background. I may have gotten too close to the subject though.
Again thanks for the observations.

Scott_Quier

The poses look very good and yes, I do believe you are "doing something right". I do think you need to spend a couple more seconds (shouldn't take much more than that) on the post processing of these and get your WB set correctly.

JAG

Scott_Quier wrote:

The poses look very good and yes, I do believe you are "doing something right". I do think you need to spend a couple more seconds (shouldn't take much more than that) on the post processing of these and get your WB set correctly.

Ok...I tried. I am horrible at skin tone corrections. WB correction works for some of the pictures but not for all. Of the two images posted above...here is the only one that I think might be somewhat an improvement. But I am not sure I completely like it. At least the first image was how I saw him that day in color. But the wb correction would be how he would look like outside. Which shows his grey more...


I guess I would have to say its a matter of individual preference? Which is more pleasing to the eye? Opinions?

Shane422

Go back to the original and add a hue/Saturation adjustment layer. Try something like this:
Reds: Hue +6, Saturation -7, lightness 0
Yellows: Hue 0, Saturation -25, Lightness +25

I think that will still leave you a bit yellow heavy in the shadows, but should bring the magenta under control.

If you haven't seen it, the smugmug skin color tutorial is quite helpful. I know only because I seriously struggle with skin tones myself.

The second version did remove the Halo blur though.

clemensphoto's

Nice posses! I'm no expert when it comes to light (beginning my self), but on the gentleman there seems to be a yellow streak/stip on his right forehead area.