New Girl, Same Hack Photographer ;)

RacinRandy

Two Lights, One Girl... One struggling Photographer.
These shots are Really for no other reason than for me(The Hack) to try again to grasp Lighting.

Set it up this time with 2 AB800's one left @ 1/2 into Giant Gridded Softy, One Right at 1/4 through a socked DB Feathered right. Been through some PP in LR, worked teeth(white) eyes, smoothed skin and added a touch of pink to her Lips. Here now,

Molly


C&C Requested, am I closer than previous attempts?

zoomer

Agree she is very pretty.
Light from the left is to low, put it above shining down like the sun, nose shadow should go down not up.
With teeth and eyes less is more, I never brighten eye whites or teeth.
Looks a bit too bright over all, detail has been lost in the skin areas from oversmoothing and to bright.

Move the light up and tone down the processing and would be good.

For the pose, looks good but her other arm should be showing more. Nice natural look from her....other than the missing arm.

BrettDeutsch

I think you've captured her well, and she looks comfortable with you. That's a huge part of getting a good portrait. But the lighting isn't wowing me. I'm having trouble seeing the lighting you've described. I see the catch lights in her eyes (which look a bit low to me), but there is very little shadowing across her face or in her sweater. The power settings on your strobes alone isn't enough, obviously, since distance from the subject, type of modifier, amount of feathering, etc. all affect the amount of light that actually hits your model. A giant softbox is going to spread pretty far and evenly across your model unless you have it strongly directed at an angle, and I suspect that's what happened here. Also, regarding post production, you've softened her skin so much that we've lost any detail. That might be adding to the flat feeling.

novicesnapper

Nice model. I can't help on the lighting issues, still working on those aspects myself. But on the PP work a few suggestions if I may. Open her back up in LR, back the whiting down about 10% on the eyes and about 20% on the teeth. They feel a little too luminescent to me. Secondly, a little less saturation on the skin tone. Since there are no other real colors in the image, just a drop in over all saturation would work, maybe 10-20%. I suspect the sweater makes her appear a little "bulky" on top? Nice Iris's by the way, love to love into those lol. I'm not seeing any obvious blown out areas, maybe I'm just missing them, I can share some test pics from a few days ago on blown out arggg lol.

RacinRandy

Edits
Okay so I went back to LR and changed it up a little.

To answer a little but more of the suggestions, the lights were 4-6 feet from the model. She isn't extremely comfortable with being posed so I just gave her Ideas and let her go. She is a wonderfully fun girl after getting past her shyness and lack of self esteem. She has a wonderful physique and is rather muscular from playing Softball(College Level) Yet thinks she's fat(Ugh). I call her a Classic Beauty at 5'6" 36-30-34 but that may be just my taste too.

Anyway, without reshooting just reprocessing and the crop is slightly different here is the same pose again.


Here is one with the other arm included


better? Worse?

Bryce Wilson

RacinRandy wrote: »

Okay so I went back to LR and changed it up a little.

To answer a little but more of the suggestions, the lights were 4-6 feet from the model. She isn't extremely comfortable with being posed so I just gave her Ideas and let her go. She is a wonderfully fun girl after getting past her shyness and lack of self esteem. She has a wonderful physique and is rather muscular from playing Softball(College Level) Yet thinks she's fat(Ugh). I call her a Classic Beauty at 5'6" 36-30-34 but that may be just my taste too.

Anyway, without reshooting just reprocessing and the crop is slightly different here is the same pose again.


Here is one with the other arm included


better? Worse?

Pose number two is MUCH better IMHO. Love the S curve thing you got going on.

The skin in number one looks to peach or orangish to me. Two is also better in that regard.

novicesnapper

Definitely better Randy, but maybe even knock some more off of #1 on saturation. #2 made me laugh, a great pose and those raised eye brows lol, nice. #2 skin tone looks great to me. I'm all for whatever is comfortable, She has great features and a lovely smile and would make some great portraits. I used my wife as a test model the other day and realized how tough it is to capture a relaxed model. I got a few nice ones towards the end, after she relaxed and just forgot about the camera lol.

Nikolai

This might help:
http://www.dgrin.com/showpost.php?p=1755318&postcount=10
(more theory in #13 a bit further)

VayCayMom

Great thread, NICE job !!! Ok so I have 1 AB 800...I need to get going to start playing. Thanks for sharing this, it really helps others when you take the time to post your work.

RacinRandy

Thanks.

VayCayMom wrote: »

Great thread, NICE job !!! Ok so I have 1 AB 800...I need to get going to start playing. Thanks for sharing this, it really helps others when you take the time to post your work.

Thanks, Also Thanks to Nik, Novice, Zoomer, Brett and Bryce!

I am getting a better grasp on these things(I think), The critiques really help. If that in turn helps others than so be it!

One thing that keeps getting mentioned is "Short Lighting", While I understand the concept I'm not sure how to apply it when using strobes. If I understand it correctly "Short Light" is shooting from the lesser lit side of a scene. Subject between camera and light source(or similar) Correct?

Nikolai

http://www.professionalphotography101.com/portrait_lighting/Portrait_lighting_diagrams.html
HTH