Portrait

andrew99 · Mar 25, 2008

Hi guys;

I'm struggling with portrait photography, I find it difficult compared to landscape and other types of pictures. Anyway, here is an un-posed shot I took of my brother over easter while he was getting some tax advice from my dad. There was a lot of natural light coming in from the window, which I think looked good. I did some minor processing in Photoshop, can you please give me you honest opinion, or what I could do to improve it?

Thanks!

(Nikon D40, Sigma 50-150@112mm, f2.8, 1/80sec, ISO 200, handheld)

Eddie_uv777 · Mar 25, 2008

Wow, that is a great photo.

MarcusM · Mar 25, 2008

I second that, this is a great shot. The lighting is great, the exposure is perfect and the colors are nice. It almost looks like a stock photo. The only thing that bugs me is his left hand is cut off at the knuckles. I think you should have framed more to your left to get his whole hand in.

kundalini · Mar 25, 2008

^^ yep

cdanddvdpublisher · Mar 25, 2008

I would also crop your fathers hand out of the picture. Its too blurry to tell what it is if you don't have the background story and kind of distracts from the photo. Very good shot though.

lockwood81 · Mar 26, 2008

Nice capture, I agree with MarcusM.

Kind of looks like a J Crew add...As Mike relaxed in his hand spun pullover....

cr thompson · Mar 26, 2008

I enjoyed this shot
there seems to be such a softness to it and ease- as if one is sliding on the floor---colors are nice
crop the other hand though*
very nice!

Charlotte

Village Idiot · Mar 26, 2008

Turn the subject 45 degrees to his left. The light is coming from the back so he has shadows over his eyes.

andrew99 · Mar 26, 2008

Thanks very much everyone! Wow, I wasn't expecting such positive comments!

Ok, I agree with the cropping. I've never done an oval crop before, but it seemed like it would be a good idea to fix two birds with one stone, without loosing too much of the image. And also here is a more traditional crop. Which one do you like more?

Thanks again for all the comments, and sorry for the large photos! Also, if anyone wants to post another crop, please be my guest!

H1945 · Mar 26, 2008

The oval crop is very cheesy in my opinion. You could have used a polarizing filter to eliminate the reflections in his glasses, but other than that and the hand thing it's a nice shot.

shorty6049 · Mar 26, 2008

heres my go at it-
people always tell me that if you're going to include hands or feet, to include the whole thing, so thats kind of what i did with this crop. I also tried a bit of vignetting at the corners to draw the viewer's eye in but its not quite strong enough to really notice

andrew99 · Mar 26, 2008

Shorty, that looks really good. The vignetting looks completely natural, that's a nice technique. My camera is only 6 MP, so I usually try not to crop this much, but I think it's ok. (this version of the photo is the one I uploaded to flickr, so flickr has already compressed and shrunk it).

H1945 - Yeah, I wasn't sure about the oval, it reminds me of pictures of pioneer women from the 1800's or something. Oh well, you gotta try and fall on your face sometimes, haha.