Some headshots - can you cc pls?

marikris

I've been taking lots of pictures lately in the hopes of being a better photographer than the day before lol. Can you guys please cc so I know I'm in the right track? No. 1&3 are in a dorm in front of a white wall with only window lighting; No. 2 is outside in the shade with no reflector or lighting help from me.

1) I feel like she might be a bit too hot, but I am not sure if it works out all around.



2) Does the crop work? Can I do better on the skin smoothing?



3) Here's one that is more understated than the first one. Wasn't sure which worked better (it could probably use some more sharpening):



Any tips/advice would be supremely, absolufantastically appreciated

~kris

Qarik

1) 3/4 of her face/hair is perfectly lit..perfect. The last 1/4 is just too hot.

2) I think the crop is fine. The skin looks to over done. Note that if this were in a more controlled lighting the skin would be okay I think. But the fact it is direct sun light, the skin looks too smooth. There are no specular high lights in the skin that you might expect from direct sun light so the effect looks "fake".

3) same as 1) except everything is 1/2 a stop darker.

Scott_Quier

#1 is the winner here - to my mind, the light isn't too hot and it can be further "corrected" in post should that be your desire. I think the shot shows a lot more of your model's personality than do the other two.

#2 - the word for the day is "fill light" - You've done a pretty good job to avoid the raccoon eyes, but didn't quite hit it out of the park. As to the crop - I love tight crops when they are tight. This is almost there. It's too tight to be "loose" and not tight enough to be a tight crop. But, that's just my taste.:D

#3 You have the same light as in #1, but none of the personality showing through. Given you have #1, I don't think I would spend much time on this one .... hmmm, that sound a bit harsh but that wasn't my intent. IMNSHO, this one just isn't nearly as good as #1.

marikris

Thanks, Qarik and Scott! No. 1 is my favorite as well, and my model loved it so that made my day.

Scott> how would you crop #2?

Qarik> for No.2 I was trying to emulate the skin smoothing in magazines. Did I go overboard on that too? I put a masked layer of the original over her forehead bc I thought she should at least have hints of wrinkles there. I'll go over it again, this time with the portion over the rest of her face set to low opacity and see the difference.

I can't quite seem to do it enough that she retain her pores

divamum

Marikris -I'm really enjoying your enthusiasm and all the work you're posting!

Regarding #2: until I read your post carefully, I actually thought she just had a lot of matte makeup on rather than that you had done a lot of PP. It is too matte, IMO (as Qarik said, the specular highlights are all gone so it doesn't look "dewy") but I think it means that you did a pretty good job of not letting us know that it was digital adjustment

With the last one, what happens if you come in REALLY tight - at the moment it's centered and just looks a bit soft overall, but I wonder if you could create a neat kind of dreamy effect with a supertight crop and some "artistic" ppto enhance the softness rather than fight it?

Btw, when you say "headshots" do you mean for modelling/acting, or just "head and shoulders"? If these are for model/acting work, comments may be a little different than if you were just referring to the crop...

Nice work - keep posting!

marikris

Divamum - I will try that. Make it dreamy and really tight, and see how that looks. Btw, you are absolutely right - I should be more careful about my terminologies. By "head shots" I didn't mean like the studio shots for actors; I just really meant the framing, but I didn't think they were totally portraits either...Maybe portrait-like?

And thanks

Scott_Quier

marikris wrote:

Scott> how would you crop #2?

Probably something like this: