Impromptu shoot with Joss and Diana

Molotov Everything

The other day my girlfriend had her friend over just to hang out earlier this week, and at one point she just decided "oh hey, we should do our hair and makeup all fancy and do a photoshoot!" So why not, let's go for it. Here are a few for critique.
I don't consider my self a portrait photographer, I read this forum a lot and I just don't think I've developed the eye for details in posing people that a lot of you guys seem to have. I don't have any real studio setup and only one flash so my lighting options are limited, but as my highschool photography teacher always said, 'a bad picture with a good excuse is still a bad picture' so here we go.

1)


2)


3) I know you generally don't want people's eyes closed but my girlfriend went nuts doing this eye makeup and I wanted to showcase it. I tried to have her winking, so you could see the eyelid in one eye but still have her looking at the camera with the other but she's physically incapable of winking without contorting her whole face in a weird way so I went with this.


4)


5) This one was my personal favorite and one of the favorites of the girls as well


6) It was a pretty fun experience for everyone, both girls love to goof around, especially when you put the two of them together. They're always making each other laugh, so occasionally stuff like this happens.

zoomer

Looks like fun.
All underexposed.

You have a couple willing models...that is half the battle...keep shooting.

garratt15a

Love the eyes. Will they model R 18, 'cos they look like fun ?

Molotov Everything

zoomer wrote: »

Looks like fun.
All underexposed.

You have a couple willing models...that is half the battle...keep shooting.

You really think they're all underexposed? I was messing around with the flash output and liked these because of the stark and shady lighting in them. I'm not dismissing your comment, it's just interesting because I intentionally picked these 6 out of the 60 or so taken to post since I liked the way they were lit and you seem to think the exact opposite. I took a few with a brighter flash and wasn't thrilled with them.
I can see that shot 3 could use a brighter exposure but 1 and 5 I thought benefited from the dark look.
As I mentioned, I look at a lot of the shots in this forum and I know you know way more than me about these kind of things but honestly when I posted these I didn't think exposure was a problem.
New thing for me to think about then. Maybe tomorrow I'll go back in to lightroom and process the exposures more and see what I think about it.

Molotov Everything

garratt15a wrote: »

Love the eyes. Will they model R 18, 'cos they look like fun ?

Hah dude I tried to bark up that tree, probably not going to happen. And since one of them is my girlfriend, and the other one is almost married, if it ever did happen I sure as hell won't be posting it on Dgrin.

zoomer

Well we all process to how our eye likes them. I you do a levels adjustment you will find there is a lot of room to the right. See how red the skin is...as you brighten the exposure the skin tones will even out.
If you like the dark look then leave them how you like them .

garratt15a

Molotov Everything wrote: »

Hah dude I tried to bark up that tree, probably not going to happen. And since one of them is my girlfriend, and the other one is almost married, if it ever did happen I sure as hell won't be posting it on Dgrin.

That's a shame, but hey, it's up to them. I have wife and ex on here.
By the way, I don't think the shots were underexposed, but I guess different people see things in different light, so to speak.

0scar99

I like 4 & 5.. the exposure works in these. In general they are a little underexposed, I think you're holding them at that level due to the bright highlights caused by your flash. If the rest of the skin was better exposed these may be burned out. Did you try bouncing off the ceiling/ walls to soften the harshness of the flash?

Molotov Everything

Yes I did try bouncing it off the ceiling, but when I did that the lighting looked too even to me, kind of lost the 'drama' I was hoping to get. I did have a sto-fen on the flash but maybe I would benefit from getting one of those flash-mountable mini softboxes?