Portrait C&C [Light Shtuff]

sprokuski · Jul 2, 2009

I love taking pictures of people, these few being from the past weekend, but I haven't yet mastered/even begun learning how to best utilize different lighting scenarios. Any advice on how I could have bettered these few images by using different techniques, lighting devices, angles etc would be greatly appreciated. And any advice in general would be just as welcomed

Thanks

image 1

image 2

image 3A

image 3B

-Sebastian

musicaleCA · Jul 2, 2009

I wouldn't go so far as to call the first a portrait, per se. You can't see the person.

As for the second, it could use some fill flash from camera right, I think. I would take a flash, and gobo it on the right side (the side against the wall) to reduce the amount of light bouncing off the wall (before anyone quotes "angle of incidence is angle of reflectance", that wall is pitted), and any colour casting on the face that might occur from it as well.

For the third, fill flash again, from camera left and above. I feel that her hair needs to be moved away from her eyes; the expression is good but gets muddled by the hair. That and it looks like it was being blown to the left, which in this case doesn't work so much.

Another idea for the same shot would be to angle the camera more toward the sun (keeping the subject facing the camera as she was), to get a little more rim lighting from it and fill the rest in with the flash.

How are you converting to B&W? (Man, I'm feeling like a broken record. I ask this every time people post B&W's here, I think.

)

NateS · Jul 2, 2009

I agree with everything said above. On the last two (color and B/W version) you could also get the sun over your shoulder with her facing into the sun and use the even lighting on her. Set it on spot exposure and expose for her face/skin. This might work better too if you don't want to use a flash.

sprokuski · Jul 2, 2009

To make the black and white, I desaturated the photo and then played with the levels and curves. Are you asking because you think it works or does it appear off?

KmH · Jul 2, 2009

That's about the worst way to make a b&w because when you desaturate all the color information is lost. You need the color info to make a nice b&w. It's the same with film, but done pre process rather than post process.

Make an b&w adjustment layer and manipulate each color slider (the image will be b&w not color) (red, yellow, green, blue, cyan, magenta) to control the contrast.

Black and white images are all about the contrast because there is no color.

A common erroneous assumption is that making a good black and white is easy peezy. It aint.

musicaleCA · Jul 2, 2009

Indeed. B&W is tricky to do right.

For a decent article on various methods of B&W conversion in digital, look here. (Unfortunately it doesn't mention the more precise—and my preferred—method that KmH pointed out of adjusting colours by ROYGABPM, but it's a good start.)

Well, I guess it's a good thing I ask how people are converting their B&W's. :lol:

Scott Bourne did a good video a while back about B&W conversion too. It's available through the TWiP podcast; episode 24. (There aren't any show-notes for it. Just subscribe and download #24.)