My first portrait post

NateWagner

I have been trying to learn how to do portrait's and the like lately. Here is one of my shots in color and in B&W. I would love to hear C&C... let me know what to work on, thanks in advance
color

B&W


along with general C&C, things I'm curious about is
1.) does this have "pop" (I tried to do that, but I'm not sure if it worked)
2.) does the fact I don't have her hand in the picture kill it, does that make it more distracting?
3.) how was the B&W conversion
4.) and most importantly how is the composition.

Thanks,
Nate

Swartzy

Hmmm...lots of questions....a great thing! That's how we all learn cool stuff. The compostion sort of works but it feels a bit contorted. She's leaning back at a weird angle and looks somewhat uncomfortable or the camera does...

I think the first one...even though some of her fingers aren't showing is better than her arm cut all the way off. I'm not a stickler for cutting parts off unless they are obviously distracting. You'll see some amazing work by Ed Pierce and the like that cut fingers here and there. It's really about the dynamic of light while posing the subject we wish to capture. Getting a good but unique pose takes lots of frames and when you see it, you should know...hard to explain.

It has good pop and the conversion is nice. Would be nice to see some others from this sitting.

NateWagner

first of all, thank you for responding.

I hadn't thought of it being an awkward pose, but now that you mention it, I can kind of see that. I'm still definitely very new at posing people, so if you have any tips on that it would be great to hear as well (for example, I did read that one should have girls keep their fingers together to avoid them looking like claws)

Well, I'll try to put a few more up tomorrow.

NateWagner

Here are a few more from the session. In all actuality they are of my wife while walking in the park. C&C please

#1


#2

#3

#4

#5


Let me know whatcha think please

Icebear

First off, if your wife has personality like she has looks, you're one lucky guy. Second, she seems like a good sport, and you have a great model to try out posing. Third, You have some serious white balance issues you need to address. I enjoyed all your shots.

NateWagner

First of all, thank you very much for taking the time to look at the photos and commenting on them.

I'm wondering if you could expound a little bit on the white balancing of them, what exactly is off? (I still have the raw versions so it will be easy enough to fix, I'm just not sure which direction is it off... is it cause her hair changes color?)

Nate

~Jan~

The first is my favorite, but I find myself wishing you were slightly more to the side of her instead of so far behind. The pose looks awkward and my eye is drawn to her shoulder. Here eyes remind me of Audrey Hepburn.

NateWagner

The first is my favorite, but I find myself wishing you were slightly more to the side of her instead of so far behind. The pose looks awkward and my eye is drawn to her shoulder. Here eyes remind me of Audrey Hepburn.

Thanks for taking the time to look and respond . I can see I really need to work on my posing. I had seen the look from above done by others and I wanted to try it, but as you said, it doesn't really look comfortable or natural.

I think that maybe if I crop it differently it will diffuse some of the focus from her shoulder, I'll give it a shot anyway.

I have definitely thought that she looks a bit like Audrey Hepburn, particularly the eyes and jaw. I have a couple other photos that remind me of specific movies .

Nate

Swartzy

NateWagner wrote:

First of all, thank you very much for taking the time to look at the photos and commenting on them.

I'm wondering if you could expound a little bit on the white balancing of them, what exactly is off? (I still have the raw versions so it will be easy enough to fix, I'm just not sure which direction is it off... is it cause her hair changes color?)

Nate

Numbers 1,3 & 4 have lots of green and yellow....look at her teeth.....unless she's been eating lots of bad bananas, I'd bet my bottom dollar they aren't that color. Do you have Photoshop? If so, to start, create a curves layer and hit "auto"....just to see the difference. There are many tutorials (Google them) on how to correct color issues. Scott Kelby's books also take you step by step.

Where these shot in RAW? Only with your permission I'll pull one of the photos and give it a whirl...let me know.

NateWagner

well, actually I did do the AWB on CS3. As for the teeth, if you'll notice she doesn't show them in any other photo (she's self conscious of them), at least according to my monitor (which may be inaccurate) the color of that photo is relatively close to actuality.

is the green and yellow in the skin tones? or...

Obviously there is something wrong with the white balance because everyone seems to have noticed it, but I just don't see it right now. I may have screwed it up trying to make the photos pop more or something I'm not sure.

Nate

Swartzy

Nate,

It may be a monitor calibration difference. I want to help so I worked on this one....if you want me to pull it off I will, just wanted to see if you saw a difference on your monitor.

NateWagner

I can definitely see a difference... what exactly did you do to it?

Swartzy

First, imported to Lightroom, used the eyedropper and found a close area to where the values were near "70". Then did some selective healing brush things. Over to CS3 after that. Did a curves layer, hit auto to start...see if I liked it. Made a saturation layer bringing up the reds by +5 and yellows down a bit, then the greens (which were overpowering) -15.

A new saturation layer: desaturated the master by -80. Filled the layer mask with black (so the photo didn't show that), then selected a brush and painted the eyes and teeth. Lowered the opacity to about 60%. New layer/overlay/brush to 15%, over eyes and teeth (makes them pop)...lowered opacity to 50%. Final: duplicated original layer and ran it through "Neat Image".

It sounds much more complicated than it is...guess when you do this stuff everyday it's second nature...but I hope this sheds some light on color correcting and it is of help.

NateWagner

well, I'll try to duplicate what you did, and see if I can learn how to do it. It's amazing to me when somebody who knows what they're doing in post gets ahold of the photo. It looks much better (I think I figured out some of the coloring that was off (I think I had vibrance and saturation too high)

thank you for showing me this, I greatly appreciate it.