Some Outdoor Portraits

JH-Photo · July 2, 2008

Would like to catch some points regarding "doing better"...
Maybe the experts inside have some comments for me to learn more.

I do photos since several years (15), but with portrait and fashion, I only started 2 years ago and therefore I would like to learn more about posing, retouching and also shooting. ( I work everytime in manually modi )

cmorganphotography · July 2, 2008

red x's.
Are your links proper? Dgrin uses unique html. and

.

JH-Photo · July 2, 2008

cmorganphotography wrote:

red x's.
Are your links proper? Dgrin uses unique html. .

don`t know whats wrong. looks like impossible to post webshots images.
but defintely put in the correct .jpg URL including the and so on. hmmm.....webshots it not the best solution all the time. thumbs are working.

and so on. hmmm.....webshots it not the best solution all the time. thumbs are working.

cmorganphotography · July 2, 2008

JH-Photo wrote:

don`t know whats wrong. looks like impossible to post webshots images.
but defintely put in the correct .jpg URL including the

I think it has to be caps. [IMG][/img]

Scott_Quier · July 2, 2008

The links work.

You surround the links with the [*img] and [*/'img] tags (remove the "*" to make them work - they are in my example so they show up.

The first one would be (of course, removing the "*")

[*img]http://img.fotocommunity.com/photos/6092336.jpg[*/img]

But, it's funny, I can go into the code and extract the links and see the images, but I can't get them to display in a post. Hmmmm

It might be that the host does not allow external links to appear/work in other pages? What's that called - hot linking? I don't remember.

rhommel · July 2, 2008

very nice portraits!!

JH-Photo wrote:

Would like to catch some points regarding "doing better"...
Maybe the experts inside have some comments for me to learn more.

I do photos since several years (15), but with portrait and fashion, I only started 2 years ago and therefore I would like to learn more about posing, retouching and also shooting. ( I work everytime in manually modi )

Nikolai · July 2, 2008

red crosses :-(

Probably disabled external links...

rhommel · July 2, 2008

just right click on the x, then click properties, you will see the link there.. then put it up on the address field on your browser

cmorganphotography · July 2, 2008

rhommel wrote:

just right click on the x, then click properties, you will see the link there.. then put it up on the address field on your browser

Once i did that they showed up on this site. Weird

rhommel · July 2, 2008

cmorganphotography wrote:

Once i did that they showed up on this site. Weird

one of those tricks i learned .. it helps when u r a techie.. lol

cmorganphotography · July 2, 2008

rhommel wrote:

one of those tricks i learned .. it helps when u r a techie.. lol

Sure, but it doesn't explain why they don't show up on their own. Just like a model to be late. Jeez.

j/k
I think fotocommunity has a bandwidth restriction or they auto disallow ext links. Makes sense but is murder on forum posting.

cmorganphotography · July 2, 2008

Now that I can see them.
The third one with the pool: her skin is very shiny and the flash or reflected light is making her skin look old and porous. I think you use the blue tool on that, but it can go too far. I'm no photoshop expert you might want to post that one in the Technique forum and they'll offer oodles of great advice.
#1 and #2 have great balance, light and personality.
#4 and #5 have an orange yellow tint on them, just a minor adjustment with the colour spectrum. The backlighting look really nice and smooth.
The last one looks fine enough it just doesn't jump out at me.

I think her tank top is pink but my eyes want to believe it's white and that throws off all the colours. The tank top is crazy bright but the rest of her seems to have underwhelming contrast. Again, Technique will be fulll of goodies for you because I'm no help. I only have iphoto.
You're doing great and have leaps and bounds of tech and skill above me, so don't get down, your pics are great!

Nikolai · July 2, 2008

rhommel wrote:

just right click on the x, then click properties, you will see the link there.. then put it up on the address field on your browser

Arrgh.. OK...
Oh wow, definitely was worth the troubles!

And now that the images are in my browser cache, they simply show up:-)

Great stuff! I like ##1, 3 and 4 the most.

Now to C&C:

1) Great natural light portrait. Love the pose and expression, that half-smile is beautiful.
I find the bg a bit to busy. I would probably copr right/bottom part of the image to get rid of most of it and also make the portrait less centered.
Also watch for her right hand fingers growing from her temple...

2) Gorgeous settings, awesome skyline. Love the bold tilt.
Sun is too close to her head, but not close enough to make it looks like a star in her hair. Also for the star effect you need to close the aperture down.
I'm not a big fan of your flash work here. Hand is overexposed, huge blown area on the forehead. Jugging by all that and the lack of visible shadows you used on-camera flash.... Come on, it's not a red carpet

Take it off the camera!!!

3)

Awesome! Pose, expression...
I would crop the left part very close to her face, again removing the dead weight and off-centering the image. I also think you used a non-gelled flash. 1/4 CTO would make it much better!

4) Superb! Lighting is flawless! Was it a golden relector to the camera right?
The idea and pose is also amazing, love the DOF and the colors.
I would probably crop the perimiter just a tad to make her relatively bigger (and again, offcenter her more)

5) This one I don't like too much. I recon it's a golden reflector again - this thing should be used in moderation. Again, dead-center. Image has an overly processed look. The dark blouse doesn't work in this scenario. The subject seems tense.

6) Nice pose, good contrast of olive skin/pink top.
Dead-centered. Non-gelled on camera flash creates a bad ligth mix and make the image look "balnd, blah and flashy".

Great series overall, can't wait for more!

JH-Photo · July 3, 2008

Nikolai wrote:

Arrgh.. OK...
Oh wow, definitely was worth the troubles!

And now that the images are in my browser cache, they simply show up:-)

Great stuff! I like ##1, 3 and 4 the most.

Now to C&C:

1) Great natural light portrait. Love the pose and expression, that half-smile is beautiful.
I find the bg a bit to busy. I would probably copr right/bottom part of the image to get rid of most of it and also make the portrait less centered.
Also watch for her right hand fingers growing from her temple...

2) Gorgeous settings, awesome skyline. Love the bold tilt.
Sun is too close to her head, but not close enough to make it looks like a star in her hair. Also for the star effect you need to close the aperture down.
I'm not a big fan of your flash work here. Hand is overexposed, huge blown area on the forehead. Jugging by all that and the lack of visible shadows you used on-camera flash.... Come on, it's not a red carpet Take it off the camera!!!

3) Awesome! Pose, expression...
I would crop the left part very close to her face, again removing the dead weight and off-centering the image. I also think you used a non-gelled flash. 1/4 CTO would make it much better!

4) Superb! Lighting is flawless! Was it a golden relector to the camera right?
The idea and pose is also amazing, love the DOF and the colors.
I would probably crop the perimiter just a tad to make her relatively bigger (and again, offcenter her more)

5) This one I don't like too much. I recon it's a golden reflector again - this thing should be used in moderation. Again, dead-center. Image has an overly processed look. The dark blouse doesn't work in this scenario. The subject seems tense.

6) Nice pose, good contrast of olive skin/pink top.
Dead-centered. Non-gelled on camera flash creates a bad ligth mix and make the image look "balnd, blah and flashy".

Great series overall, can't wait for more!

Dear photo-friends,

thank you for your overall opinion. I learned much today :-)

My portraits pics are centered. Today I will have a handbag and Bikini Shooting. I will try to keep out my model of the centre.

You are really an expert. Correct for the pics 4 and 5 I really use the
gold reflector. ;-)

For the pic 5. Which blouse color would you recomment for have better impact ?

Next point. For this pictures I used most time the 430 EX flash on camera.
But there is no possibility to put off. If I would have the 580 EX , I think I can go to the side with 2 flashes. one on cam and one beside.
But only with the 430 EX it doesn`t work ??

For the pic with the skyline. You recomment to put off. Would you shoot without flash here ?

Best regards
Jens

P.S.: I don`t know, why posting don`t work like with your pics. Maybe due to your smugmug accounts ? Maybe only possible to quote from smugmug ?
Because posting with webshot url also not working

Scott_Quier · July 3, 2008

JH-Photo wrote:

Dear photo-friends,

thank you for your overall opinion. I learned much today :-)

My portraits pics are centered. Today I will have a handbag and Bikini Shooting. I will try to keep out my model of the centre.

You are really an expert. Correct for the pics 4 and 5 I really use the
gold reflector. ;-)

For the pic 5. Which blouse color would you recomment for have better impact ?

Next point. For this pictures I used most time the 430 EX flash on camera.
But there is no possibility to put off. If I would have the 580 EX , I think I can go to the side with 2 flashes. one on cam and one beside.
But only with the 430 EX it doesn`t work ??

For the pic with the skyline. You recomment to put off. Would you shoot without flash here ?

Best regards
Jens

P.S.: I don`t know, why posting don`t work like with your pics. Maybe due to your smugmug accounts ? Maybe only possible to quote from smugmug ?
Because posting with webshot url also not working

You can take the 430 off-camera. Requires something like a Wien hot-shoe adapter and something to get the trigger signal to the flash You can check out threads on DGrin talking about ebay radio triggers/transmitters or you can simply use a long x-synch cord between your camera and the hot-shoe adapter. Of course, when you do this, you are going to have to set the flash power manually - no more ETT-L

. But, it's not as hard it sounds. Check out the strobist for LOTS of information on how to make that work well. A trick I learned - get the flash exposure close with the on-flash controls then make minor corrections by moving the flash either closer to or further from the subject.

For the pic of the girl and skyline (the titled one - right), I don't think you can do this without using something for fill - she's backlit. Flash can be made to work well in this situation if you:

Properly gel your flash (you were shooting late/early in the day and the ambient light was quite warm) and
Properly place the flash. In your shot, you had some dramatic light fall-off between her hand and the rest of her (her face/body were properly exposed, BTW). This light fall off indicates to me that your flash was quite close to the model. Need to think about and apply the inverse-square law as it applies to light propagation.

I hope this helps a bit.

Oh, BTW - I really like the shots and believe that if you apply even part of what Nik has suggested you will have some serious winners!

Some Outdoor Portraits

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