First Time Senior Shoot

cgmcdonald · December 11, 2009

Hey everybody! I have been into photography for a long time but have just started to get serious about it. Today I shot my first ever senior portrait session for my first "paying" customer ...anyway here is one of the shots...

Might put a few more up over then next day or so...tell me what you think I am always looking to get better!

adbsgicom · December 11, 2009

Charles, I'm not a pro, but here's my sense on it.

I like the composition a lot. It has a lot going for it.

I'm not sure about the tilt you have going; everything is CCW by a degree or so.
I think you need to bump up your levels/contrast a bit; it feels too dark. The highlights on the side of the face might make your job there a bit harder as that is close to saturated.

What was your lighting setup, out of curiosity?

cgmcdonald · December 11, 2009

adbsgicom wrote:

Charles, I'm not a pro, but here's my sense on it.

I like the composition a lot. It has a lot going for it.

I'm not sure about the tilt you have going; everything is CCW by a degree or so.
I think you need to bump up your levels/contrast a bit; it feels too dark. The highlights on the side of the face might make your job there a bit harder as that is close to saturated.

What was your lighting setup, out of curiosity?

Thanks for your response! It was an over cast day leading up to the 4:00pm (1.5h before dark) time to shoot and then the sky opened up and there was some very strong sidelight coming in. That was really hard to work with until about 30mins after this shot. I should have used a fill flash but did not think about until I got in my car

. The picture above was taken in 100% shade and it still try to blow the side of his face out (not as bad as some of the others).

Personally, I am not a fan of the tilt either but from what the mom was telling me she wanted I thought i would fit. I am offering it with both. Have been working on the saturation levels this morning. Once I got up and looked at my steps I put a 20/10/-10/-20 medium contrast bend in Lightroom and then after working on it in photoshop cleaning the face up put another 15/5/-5/-15 medium contrast bend (I was really tired). Anyway took the second one off and it looks much better.

adbsgicom · December 11, 2009

Hmm... I think the contrast in the first is better, this one feels more flat/grey. I wish I had the insight to be more specific on what needs to happen. Sorry.

I think if you just bump your grey point a bit it will lighten things up, and if you can bring down the white point a bit as well.

Regarding the lack of fill. Yeah that would help, and I know all too well about knowing exactly what I should have done after the moment is past.

Congratulations on your first paying gig, though!! That's huge!

Here's what I did with you latest, what do you think?
Levels: 9/1.18/223
Overlay Layer with 50% grey. Then added a gradient from 134 to 155 with the center point down his nose. This lighten the dark side nicely.
To get the brick a little pop and net add a little red to his skin, I popped the vibrance +70, which is huge but seems to work here.
Tweaked the curves a bit to add a little in the the highlights. Left the shadows flat.

sr2.jpg

cgmcdonald · December 11, 2009

adbsgicom wrote:

Hmm... I think the contrast in the first is better, this one feels more flat/grey. I wish I had the insight to be more specific on what needs to happen. Sorry.

I think if you just bump your grey point a bit it will lighten things up, and if you can bring down the white point a bit as well.

Regarding the lack of fill. Yeah that would help, and I know all too well about knowing exactly what I should have done after the moment is past.

Congratulations on your first paying gig, though!! That's huge!

Here's what I did with you latest, what do you think?
Levels: 9/1.18/223
Overlay Layer with 50% grey. Then added a gradient from 134 to 155 with the center point down his nose. This lighten the dark side nicely.
To get the brick a little pop and net add a little red to his skin, I popped the vibrance +70, which is huge but seems to work here.
Tweaked the curves a bit to add a little in the the highlights. Left the shadows flat.

sr2.jpg

Thanks for that! I am still learning photoshop...have taught myself everything on my own so its always helpful to get a little guidance in that area! I know of 3 ways to put in gradient and know that there is prob more. Which way are you using?

adbsgicom · December 11, 2009

The trick, here, so to speak is that if you create an new layer, set the mode to Overlay and fill it with 50% grey (127/127/127), then you can selectively burn/dodge the image by lightening or darkening the grey in the layer.

So here I just set the foreground and background colors (based on trial/error and guess) and used the gradient tool to sweep across his face (a little to the outside actually). I used the linear gradient mode so I ended up with a straight rectangle.

Oh, I also ran smart-sharpen on the image just to make it a bit less soft at this resolution. You may not need/want that for your production print. That ran with the defaults. I actually just ran it on the base layer instead of the flattened image.

You may want to clean up the little creases under his eyes unless they are always there and part of him being him. One thing I learned here was that this is best accomplished using the patch tool. Works wonders....

cgmcdonald · December 11, 2009

adbsgicom wrote:

The trick, here, so to speak is that if you create an new layer, set the mode to Overlay and fill it with 50% grey (127/127/127), then you can selectively burn/dodge the image by lightening or darkening the grey in the layer.

So here I just set the foreground and background colors (based on trial/error and guess) and used the gradient tool to sweep across his face (a little to the outside actually). I used the linear gradient mode so I ended up with a straight rectangle.

Oh, I also ran smart-sharpen on the image just to make it a bit less soft at this resolution. You may not need/want that for your production print. That ran with the defaults. I actually just ran it on the base layer instead of the flattened image.

You may want to clean up the little creases under his eyes unless they are always there and part of him being him. One thing I learned here was that this is best accomplished using the patch tool. Works wonders....

thx

Hackbone · December 11, 2009

Andrew, nice primer, thanks!

adbsgicom · December 11, 2009

Hackbone wrote:

Andrew, nice primer, thanks!

Thanks. Its good to be able to give back into the forums given all y'all have done to help me....

First Time Senior Shoot

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