Natural Light Portrait

zweiblumen

As I've mentioned before, I'm not much of a portrait photographer, but it's something I'd like to do more. Having a studio and/or some lights would probably help with that. But we work with what we have.

Lit from a LARGE window at 9am on about the 8th floor or so? Pretty high up, light coming almost straight in.



C&C appreciated. Thanks for looking.

Llywellyn

I'm not much of a portrait photographer, either, so take what I say with a grain of salt. I have my first paid portrait shoot coming up soon and am reading like mad to learn.

First off, the expression you captured is great. It doesn't feel overly posed, and you have that connection (a rather intense one :whew) with the eyes. The DOF is also very nice--not too shallow or deep.

I like the angle you were going for with the light, but it's resulted in some rather harsh shadows on the face and a blown-out area on the left. The glow on the right--perfection! I was going to suggest a reflector down low, just slightly camera left, to try to brighten up that area around his right eye a little. I'm afraid, however, that it would have resulted in blowing out his right temple even more. Placed low enough, you could probably achieve it, and bring out some detail in his shirt. The black looks clipped here (could be my screen).

Watch the hands--his middle finger being slightly lower makes it look amputated because of the harsh shadows. It's great placement and position for the candid feel, but having the light hit those top two fingers the way it does the bottom two would help. The unevenness there distracts me a little from the much more interesting and attractive face.

I haven't made up my mind on the background. Actually, I love it, but I don't know yet if I like or dislike the curved bar running through his head. I like how it accentuates the pose and immediately draws focus straight to the eyes. Then...it starts to distract me a little from those self-same eyes.

Speaking of the eyes, brighten them up a little more. With a look like that, I want no doubt he's lookin' at me, and the shadows are a smidge too deep for my taste.

...

Sorry for the long-windedness. All that said, my first reaction was, "Yowza! I'd like to wallpaper my office with this." When all's said and done, you captured a fantastic expression and moment.

zweiblumen

Thanks!

Yeah, the blow-out is what it is. I need to look at my histogram more while shooting.

As for the eyes, I had lightened more but he looks like a specter from the deep so I pulled it back a bit. Still working on that.

Thanks for the detailed feedback. Super helpful!

Mitchell

I like the pose, but the lighting just doesn't do it for me here. You need to do a better job of controlling the light along with better positioning of your model. Moving from left to right you have overexposed, underexposed and then properly exposed his face. His eyes are also underexposed which lessens the impact of you pose.

You might have done better with a scrim in front of the window and some reflectors to balance the light better. It seems odd that you had such strong sun at 0900. Perhaps the fact that you were high up allowd the light to stream too strongly through the window.

jeffreaux2

Excellent!!!

I like it as is. The harsh lighting looks very masculine, and the BG looks very industrial. True he has the blown area on his face, and there are other areas that are inky black......I like it anyway. Harsh lighting, harsh environment, and a harsh guy.

My only nit pick would be to darken the triangle of BG that shows itself under his arm pit. That is awful bright down in the darkest area of the photo and competes for the eye.

I am sure that you wish you had saved the highlights. If you shot RAW, you could make two versions at different exposures.....one to bring down the highlights, the other bring up the shadows. Then, combine these in PS as layers, and create a mask to reveal the areas in each layer that you would like to use. Again though....if it were mine.....I would let the harshness speak for itself.

Nice job!!