portrait shoot C&C

[Christie Photo]

Yeah... you're gonna want a longer lens. I suggest at least 80mm for individual portraits.

But I think the best place to put your attention right now is posing and lighting.

Let's look at the first one. The lighting here is pretty flat, mostly due to the on-camera flash. As a result, we don't get a sense of roundness or shape. The pose isn't too bad, but all the problems are compounded by the short lens. Posing her hands bunched together and close to her face exaggerates the size of her hands so that they compete for attention with her face. Her body is creating horizontal line, which is stagnant and not as flowing as a diagonal line (like her arms).

Did you consider cropping this one to a vertical format? That might help with the background and minimize the effect of the short lens.

I hope this helps!

-Pete

 

[ViceOfFire]

I would say they look pretty good, especially for a 2nd time. I like #2 the best, and in #4 the sunlight seems to hit her face a little awkwardly, did you clone some of it out or something? But that's about all I can say really, much better than I'll ever be able to do.

 

[CameronDelray]

Yeah... you're gonna want a longer lens. I suggest at least 80mm for individual portraits.

But I think the best place to put your attention right now is posing and lighting.

Let's look at the first one. The lighting here is pretty flat, mostly due to the on-camera flash. As a result, we don't get a sense of roundness or shape. The pose isn't too bad, but all the problems are compounded by the short lens. Posing her hands bunched together and close to her face exaggerates the size of her hands so that they compete for attention with her face. Her body is creating horizontal line, which is stagnant and not as flowing as a diagonal line (like her arms).

Did you consider cropping this one to a vertical format? That might help with the background and minimize the effect of the short lens.

I hope this helps!

-Pete

Hmm. I honestly think the lighting on #1 was the best out of the 4. Personal preference, I suppose.

I'm a bit clueless, but why would I want a longer lens for portraits? Isn't 50mm one of the best lengths for portraits? Not exactly sure what effect an 80mm lens would give me.

@Vice
Thanks. Yeah, the bright sun caused a HORRIBLE shadow on #4 that I didn't notice when taking it. But, it was such a gorgeous picture, I tried saving it by attempting to lighten her face/neck, while darkening the rest a bit.

 

[Christie Photo]

Hmm. I honestly think the lighting on #1 was the best out of the 4.

So do I. But it's not particularly good portrait lighting.

I'm a bit clueless, but why would I want a longer lens for portraits? Isn't 50mm one of the best lengths for portraits?

It's a step in the right direction. I believe a "normal lens" for your camera would be about 35mm. The distance between objects in an image is exaggerated more and more as the focal length becomes shorter and shorter. The other side of this is as the focal length increases, the distance between objects in an image begin to appear more and more natural. This is all due to angle of view, which varies as the distance from subject to camera changes.

So... working with a normal lens, when we move in close enough to frame an individual (head and shoulders) portrait, we see the angle of view reach a point that is less than flattering. As we back away with that same lens, showing more and more of the scene, the angles become more and more natural looking. But now we have framed a full-length portrait.

Conventional wisdom in the profession is a lens twice the normal focal length provides a natural enough look for individual portraits without putting the photographer too far from the subject. Framing a 3/4 length portrait can be successfully achieved with with a lens a bit shorter.... like a 50mm on your camera.

But along with shorter focal lengths comes some other considerations, like including more of the background in the view, and deeper depth of field.

Not exactly sure what effect an 80mm lens would give me.

So, if you made your first image here with a 80mm lens, I bet the white building on the right would not have come into view, the background would be softer (providing even more separation of the subject from the background), and her head would not appear to be 8x larger than her foot.

Whew! I hope I was able to express this well in writing. I wish we could just take our gear and a model and go see how this all works.

-Pete

 

[tsaraleksi]

Number one has been more than adequately covered by the other comments, but is generally a quality image.

Number two is a bit of a problem. The bench really draws the eye away from the subject, both on the left where it's "L" is brighter and more prominent than your subject's face, and on the right where it pokes out of her back noticeably. Also, that angle is very unflattering for her arm-- it makes it look broad, particularly emphasized by the fact that much of the light in the image is coming from dead on. The way her arm is cramped up is also very awkward looking and you might think about doing a little touch up work on her back, something has made it look a little 'rough' where I imagine it does not look that way in real life.

I don't mind number Three, it's a generally pleasing image. However, a longer focal length with a bit shallower depth of field would do this image wonders. At the same time, having her sit up a bit more would make her look better as well-- the way it is now, with her shirt bunched up, makes her look broad across the midsection in a way that the other images indicate she is not.

Number Four is pretty good. It looks like you're shooting up at her, however, which is not particularly flattering. The biggest consequence is that here again, she looks broader across the midsection than she should. On the other hand, what this image does well that the other ones (except for number ) do not do well is draw the eye directly to her face. That's something you should be aiming for every time. The one thing in this image that pulls away from the face is her knees. The bright skin of her knees is a distraction from her face because of the imbalance in brightness value.

The basic thrust of what I'm trying to say is that these are a good start. If you take my comments and some of the others made here and work it into your images, you'll be able to improve a lot.

One final note, more for the model than you: she has the same expression in every image, something that's pretty common. I have no idea what these images are for but if it's for any kind of modeling or what-have-you she should aim at a more diverse set of expressions.

I hope all this helps

 

[Alpha]

The compositions and exposures are good for this sort of work. I'd work a bit on direction. Her eyes are a bit sleepy. Engage your subjects. And careful with the highlights in post. Highlight areas have a blue cast to them, and there isn't enough highlight detail. Other than that, not bad.

 

[CameronDelray]

@Pete
I honestly like the affect of her upper body being bigger than her lower body. It brings more attention to the parts of the image that are the most important: her gorgeous face. I see what you mean about the lenses though.

@tsaraleksi
How can you say #4 looks unflattering? She doesn't look "big" the least bit, in my opinion. She looks absolutely dazzling. As far as #3, it's completely obvious that her shirt is blowing in the wind.

Thanks for the C&C

 

[tsaraleksi]

Blowing in the wind or not, a horizontally lined shirt that is bunched up is simply not flattering to her form. It really stretches her shape out oddly. You know that it's because of X,Y,Z and that's not what she really looks like, because you were there and you took the picture. But to the viewer, things look different.