Some outdoor shots...
Tim Kamppinen
Registered Users Posts: 816 Major grins
A month or so ago I got my friend Kristin to model for me. I finally got around to editing the shots, and here they are. These are some of my first outdoor portraits. I'm more used to indoor "studio" type shots where I'm totally in control of the light so there was a lot of experimenting going on here as far as balancing flash and ambient and so forth.
All except 4 and 6 were lit with an sb-600 through a shoot through umbrella. #5 had a CTO gel on the flash and tungsten WB... I've since concluded that a full CTO is way too much for this... the red channel was blown all over in the skin tones and took a bunch of annoying work to correct. One thing I'm finding is that I really like tilted compositions for portraits. I find it makes the shots seem more dynamic and interesting, and sometimes it will emphasize the subject by making their surroundings/background more abstract. The problem is I have a hard time remembering to do it in-camera. All of these were shot pretty much level and cropped every which way. I really want to get to the point where I just compose it in camera the way I want it to end up, because I'm wasting valuable pixels by cropping away large parts of the image.
As always, I'd be grateful for any comments and suggestions you guys have.
(If the pics don't show up on a work computer it's probably because they're linked from facebook. It's just a lot easier than turning on external links, turning on sharing, copying all the urls and then turning it off again on my website... I wish there was an "owner share" button on the pics... does anyone know an easier way around this?)
1.
2.
3.
4. (This one is available light only, right around sunset)
5.
6. (Actually I took this one while we were at an open-mic night... that's one of the candles that were on the tables)
All except 4 and 6 were lit with an sb-600 through a shoot through umbrella. #5 had a CTO gel on the flash and tungsten WB... I've since concluded that a full CTO is way too much for this... the red channel was blown all over in the skin tones and took a bunch of annoying work to correct. One thing I'm finding is that I really like tilted compositions for portraits. I find it makes the shots seem more dynamic and interesting, and sometimes it will emphasize the subject by making their surroundings/background more abstract. The problem is I have a hard time remembering to do it in-camera. All of these were shot pretty much level and cropped every which way. I really want to get to the point where I just compose it in camera the way I want it to end up, because I'm wasting valuable pixels by cropping away large parts of the image.
As always, I'd be grateful for any comments and suggestions you guys have.
(If the pics don't show up on a work computer it's probably because they're linked from facebook. It's just a lot easier than turning on external links, turning on sharing, copying all the urls and then turning it off again on my website... I wish there was an "owner share" button on the pics... does anyone know an easier way around this?)
1.
2.
3.
4. (This one is available light only, right around sunset)
5.
6. (Actually I took this one while we were at an open-mic night... that's one of the candles that were on the tables)
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Comments
14-24 24-70 70-200mm (vr2)
85 and 50 1.4
45 PC and sb910 x2
http://www.danielkimphotography.com
http://www.imagesbyceci.com
http://www.facebook.com/ImagesByCeci
Picadilly, NB, Canada
My only question... all of them except # 3 and #6 look rather soft. I know that your images are usually tack-sharp, so I'm wondering what's going on ... is it the processing maybe? My monitor is calibrated, fwiw, but rather small (laptop).
Thanks. The softness could be a few things. #4 actually is fairly soft. I shot it with my 18-200 VR, not the sharpest lens in the world, at 200mm, 1/100 and 5.6 which is wide open at that end. It's also cropped quite a bit (as I said I need to do a better job of cropping in-camera) and the ISO was at 400. So yeah, that one's just straight up soft, unfortunately. I want a Nikkor 80-200 2.8 sooo bad...
#5 was shot with the tamron 28-75 at 75mm and 2.8, so the DOF is pretty narrow. It's a little soft wide open. The eyes look fairly sharp but it's possible the focus wasn't dead on for this one, as well.
The rest are actually really sharp when viewed at 100% on my monitor, so I'm guessing that facebook's crappy compression algorithm is to blame for any softness in those shots. The other thing is that the processing on a few of them gives the impression of softness overall but they're actually sharp up close in the details.
http://blog.timkphotography.com
That's exactly what it is, I bet - I didn't see that in your initial post (that'll teach me to skim the text to get to the pictures), so wrist-smack to me!
No problem, I'm glad you said something. When I went back to look at the shots again, I noticed that in #6 there was some weird blotchy areas that looked like they had been desaturated on her cheek in the shadows. I have no idea how that happened or how I managed to miss it, but I went back and fixed it in the original and uploaded the fixed version to both my website and facebook... I think sometimes when I'm editing/retouching photos I get so absorbed in the minute details that I forget to step back and look at the overall scheme of things... which results in missing stuff like that. Not good at all!
http://blog.timkphotography.com
www.CottageInk.smugmug.com
NIKON D700