Studio Portraits - some bands & long exposure

[lisa_13]

I've been working on my final lighting project; a series of musicians. These first two are for the project and the third is just some fun we had with long exposures and multiple strobe pops! Comments & critiques are nice

1)


2) (i'm going to take the text out for the print)


3)

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[Steve Reddin]

Hi,

On the first photo, I think the idea of the pose is good but there is a couple of points I'd suggest and overall if it were me I'd reshoot this particular photo:

* I think it was a mistake to have one member sitting; it looks like he's a really tiny person.

* I'm usually happy to break rules of composition when it makes sense to do so, but one cardinal portrait rule is never crop at a joint, e.g. ankle, knee etc but rather between two joints. As the person sitting is cut at the waist, I think it just doesn't work properly.

* the overall photo lacks balance and seems heavily weighted to the left; more people this side, cropping at the arm of the left-most subject that isn't matched on the other side and a substantial gap between the right-most subject and the person standing beside him all throw this photo off for me.

* you should watch out for subjects that are not at ease, the subject second from the left looks very uneasy and this came out straight away to me...unfortunately as photographers the need to relax subjects falls within our remit.

* the overall photo is a little too dark for me and for B&W doesn't offer good contrast.

The headshots look very well, at this scale I can't see anything untoward about them.

The final photo is a nice idea, I'd just reposition the subject to the right of the photo so that he is looking into the frame rather than out of it.

Steve

[Derrel]

Your photos seem to have some tension due to the heads of the subjects being shown very close to the edges of the frame. I see that most strongly in the first, group photo, where the fellow on the left is awkwardly cropped off, and the heads of the four guys standing are all very close to the top edge of the frame. In the four headshots, the figures seem spaced toward the "outside" of your 4-frame collage. Your lighting, although unremarkable, gives us very good,sharp,clear looks at all the band members, which is something I think their fans would appreciate. Your group shot B&W conversion's tonal control looks good! Very good, crisp looking B&W values, from black to white, with shadow detail. I wish their feet were included in the shot,however. I'd like to have seen the multiple exposure done against a darker background, but maybe that would be considered too traditional. I dunno, just my thoughts...