2 B&W portraits

[dinucringuri]

A portrait of my gf and of myself...some comments and critique would be appreciated

btw love the forum...

 

[Rosy]

they are both great - love the lighting on her

WELCOME to the forum!

 

[dinucringuri]

Thanks rosy. I'm sad i have not found this forum earlier...

 

[Rosy]

well late is better than never

it is an awesome forum, the expertise in this place is incredible

 

[Ron Evers]

I like the one of yourself except for the cut off head. the GF has very distracting strong shadowing particularly on her neck.

 

[nycphotography]

The of you is great. The std comment will probably be to bump it and make it pop, but I think I like this treatment.. dark and moody suits the skully and the lighting.

The one of her, the light falls off too much to the top right for my taste, but I bet a transition exposure mask layer could fix that. Or whatever you'd call the actual technique.

 

[Bend The Light]

I like the one of you, too, although if you are gonna crop the top I would crop it some more, and a smidge off the bottom too. Make the crop count.

For the lady, I don't mind the dark shadow on her face, but the heavier shadow on the neck is too much. I had a simialr problem shooting myself a while back and kept getting a shadow on my shoulder and placing the lights to get rid was a pain.

Nice tones elsewhere, however.

 

[Mully]

The GF image is rather cool because it is very 1930's 40's style ...even if you did not plan it that way. The image of you , I would crop right above the eyes as the hat tells nothing ...Welcome and BTW I like them.

 

[dinucringuri]

Thanks for the imput guys! If i'm not too lazy i'll post a photo with a tighter crop on my selfp.
@ NYC - any tutorial on the technique?...i do work with masks but i'm not familiar with your idea regarding the shadow on her neck.

 

[Bend The Light]

I think what NYC is getting at is this:


exposure layer gradient mask by http://bendthelight.me.uk, on Flickr

The first is original. In the second I added an exposure adjustment layer, upped the exposure, then used a gradient in the layer mask (black to white) to only allow the upped exposure to affect the top parts of the image.

This is not perfect, not finely adjusted, but you can see the effect.

Hope that helps

 

[dinucringuri]

ok...i understand what you're talking about...thank you sir:hail:

 

[nycphotography]

I think what NYC is getting at is this:

Dude, thanks for the quick demo. That's exactly what I was talking about.