Turning in as part of my final (C&C)

justin24

So I am working on my final (portfolio) for portrait class and we have to turn in 8 shots. I decided to do a greek mythology theme with my portraits and well here is Theseus v The Minotaur.

Qarik

pretty cool image! except the legs of the minotaur is getting a bit lost in the BG

Bryce Wilson

Qarik mentioned the legs and the fact that it's a pretty cool image. I agree.

I will add however, that although the two fighters (except for the legs) look quite natural against the background the female really looks photoshopped in and not as realistic as she should.

justin24

your right it does, but when seeing it in full screen at a higher image quality it doesn't looks better.

Thank you for the input. There are still two more images being worked on, hopefully I will get them soon and post those.

justin24

Bryce are you referring to the Minotaur legs?

Bryce Wilson

justin24 wrote: »

Bryce are you referring to the Minotaur legs?

Yes.

And, I think the image would be MUCH stronger if you would loose the female completely.

zoomer

Cool idea, cool image....but it's the little things.
The selection on the girl is really sketchy...not clean. The minataur is dark the guy in the middle is bright and girl is somewhere in the middle.
As mentioned you could probably just remove her.

VayCayMom

WOW that is quite an undertaking. Very impressive work here.
My nit is that the girl's legs are the second brightest spot , other than the sparks. The Minotaur has dark fur on his legs but I can barely see them on my monitor. His upper body is awesome and I like the bronze tones on his chest but my eye is drawn to where the most light is, which in general is the area of sparks and behind that the woman, mainly her legs. Look at them compared to Theseus's skin.
That is my nit, I love everything else.

Moving Pictures

justin24 wrote: »

So I am working on my final (portfolio) for portrait class and we have to turn in 8 shots. I decided to do a greek mythology theme with my portraits and well here is Theseus v The Minotaur.

I'm a little surprised at the comments so far, because they're not assisting you sufficiently. I suggest my peers on the forum are not pointing out some glaring deficiencies that really should be brought forward.

First off, the lady is clearly photoshopped. Why? For one, there's been not even a whit of attempt to fix the colour cast that isn't present in the other two characters.

Then we get down to the lighting direction, which is highly variable throughout the assembled scene. The woman looks like she was shot with the light from above and in front, as there's shadows under her arms. The "hero" immediately to her side is shot with light from both sides, left and right, and that glaring incongruity, combined with the colour casting on the woman, just underscores the artificial/Photoshop nature of her presence.

The Minotaur is lit with only one left-side light - which really jars the eye, given the dual-lighting situation of the hero. It screams, again, photoshop. (If it's that bright on the minotaur's pecs, the back of the hero and left side of the woman would have to be similarly bright - and that's not the case.) Then there's the fourth incongruity: the lighting on the rocks, which comes from yet another angle ...

You have sparks coming off the shield in the left hand of the hero magically jumping over the spear in the right, which only adds to the distractions that already tell the viewer it was crudely assembled. Never mind that the spark pattern is obviously faked - its direction is indicative of a grinder.

Compunding matters, is that the eye of shield-guy isn't looking at his opponent, which is really disconcerting.

I need to say that you had an exceptional vision for an idea - and I applaud you on its conception - but its execution probably required being captured with one frame, so it could be cohesively illuminated ... or, shot using the exact same lighting setup/speed/iso/aperture, with the characters moved into the appropriate locations for later assemby. That, at least, would have avoided the obvious lighting incongruities and white balance issues.

Quincy T

Moving Pictures wrote: »

I'm a little surprised at the comments so far, because they're not assisting you sufficiently. I suggest my peers on the forum are not pointing out some glaring deficiencies that really should be brought forward.

First off, the lady is clearly photoshopped. Why? For one, there's been not even a whit of attempt to fix the colour cast that isn't present in the other two characters.

Then we get down to the lighting direction, which is highly variable throughout the assembled scene. The woman looks like she was shot with the light from above and in front, as there's shadows under her arms. The "hero" immediately to her side is shot with light from both sides, left and right, and that glaring incongruity, combined with the colour casting on the woman, just underscores the artificial/Photoshop nature of her presence.

The Minotaur is lit with only one left-side light - which really jars the eye, given the dual-lighting situation of the hero. It screams, again, photoshop. (If it's that bright on the minotaur's pecs, the back of the hero and left side of the woman would have to be similarly bright - and that's not the case.) Then there's the fourth incongruity: the lighting on the rocks, which comes from yet another angle ...

You have sparks coming off the shield in the left hand of the hero magically jumping over the spear in the right, which only adds to the distractions that already tell the viewer it was crudely assembled. Never mind that the spark pattern is obviously faked - its direction is indicative of a grinder.

Compunding matters, is that the eye of shield-guy isn't looking at his opponent, which is really disconcerting.

I need to say that you had an exceptional vision for an idea - and I applaud you on its conception - but its execution probably required being captured with one frame, so it could be cohesively illuminated ... or, shot using the exact same lighting setup/speed/iso/aperture, with the characters moved into the appropriate locations for later assemby. That, at least, would have avoided the obvious lighting incongruities and white balance issues.

I agree with the above, and would also point out that it appears the opacity of Theseus's right leg seems to be a little wispy (possible spell), and directly below that some sort of strange mishap has caused a chunk of this fair maiden's leg to go missing. Once again, this could be some wild minotaur magic.

Hackbone

Justin, I think you did a great job on this shot. The wide angle distortion of the ladies legs and her overall temperature is a bit of a bother but I'll bet most of the folks here would have some type of difficulty in creating this shot also (me included). Most folks would not notice most of the nits mentioned above as most folks only see a photo for 5 seconds or less. Congrats on a unique concept and pulling it off rather well.

Cowboydoug

Moving Pictures wrote: »

I'm a little surprised at the comments so far, because they're not assisting you sufficiently. I suggest my peers on the forum are not pointing out some glaring deficiencies that really should be brought forward.

First off, the lady is clearly photoshopped. Why? For one, there's been not even a whit of attempt to fix the colour cast that isn't present in the other two characters.

Then we get down to the lighting direction, which is highly variable throughout the assembled scene. The woman looks like she was shot with the light from above and in front, as there's shadows under her arms. The "hero" immediately to her side is shot with light from both sides, left and right, and that glaring incongruity, combined with the colour casting on the woman, just underscores the artificial/Photoshop nature of her presence.

The Minotaur is lit with only one left-side light - which really jars the eye, given the dual-lighting situation of the hero. It screams, again, photoshop. (If it's that bright on the minotaur's pecs, the back of the hero and left side of the woman would have to be similarly bright - and that's not the case.) Then there's the fourth incongruity: the lighting on the rocks, which comes from yet another angle ...

You have sparks coming off the shield in the left hand of the hero magically jumping over the spear in the right, which only adds to the distractions that already tell the viewer it was crudely assembled. Never mind that the spark pattern is obviously faked - its direction is indicative of a grinder.

Compunding matters, is that the eye of shield-guy isn't looking at his opponent, which is really disconcerting.

I need to say that you had an exceptional vision for an idea - and I applaud you on its conception - but its execution probably required being captured with one frame, so it could be cohesively illuminated ... or, shot using the exact same lighting setup/speed/iso/aperture, with the characters moved into the appropriate locations for later assemby. That, at least, would have avoided the obvious lighting incongruities and white balance issues.

I'm glad you said it... i concur ... I would like to add one comment with respect to the size relationship of the spear chucker and the gal... either he is to small or she is an amazon... from her knees down she is especially huge... or... he is to small... it's a small amount...but considering the average person can detect a vertical line being off by as little as an 1/8th of an inch I think the difference is to much...
That said... love where you are going with this... and considering the amount of creative time on this I say go the extra mile & work it just a bit more...
bravo on what you have done...

Mike Bishop

Girl is to white. Her knee is as big as her head. She needs to loose the hot pink bra. Her foot looks super funky.

The part that bothers me the most is the cartoon helm and shield. Ruins the whole photo like a flock of geese pooping on a black car that was just washed and waxed.

justin24

Thank you everyone for your input. I appreciate the feedback so far.

justin24

The helmet is actually a real prop we used.

justin24

For the shoot we had to shoot the minotur separately from Theseus and Araidne. The person who was supposed to play the minotaur flaked, so theseus had two parts to play. For the lighting setup, there was one strobe next to the female slightly above her. We had a strobe in the back of the minotaur, and a large umbrella which cover the rest of the scene.