Adi

[DramaDork626]

Olympus Digital, outdoor, no flash. Snowy weather.
Yup, this was kinda an unexpected photoshoot. At first he wanted me to get shots of his motorcycle, but it was too cold for him to drive it up here, so he came by car and I took pictures of him. I had to improvise on what to do with him, so we took a drive to the park. So there he is grabbin so swing chains.
Does his face need to be burned more? Should I blur the background more? Should the shadows on his face be more accented?
give me any other suggestions you can think of

 

[Rob]

I like your composition of subject background here, and the exposure is very nearly right, possibly just make it a smidgen darker.

Things which I believe you could improve:

Shadow - facial shadows are vital to a human portrait and you need to pay special attention to the nose shadow and the eye cavities. He's got an interesting face which lends itself well to portraits, but the hard shadow from his nose is distracting and becomes the main feature of the picture.

Eyes - The general portrait "rule" is to fully include enough detail in both eyes to show the following three items: pupil, whites and catchlight. The right eye is ok, but missing a catchlight, but the left eye is a bit too small, it could really do with being more in the shot.

DOF - In my opinion you could have widened the aperture a stop or two to take the background out of focus slightly. With a PnS digital, I tend to put it in AP mode and set the aperture 2 stops from as wide as possible for portraits. This gives a faster exposure and a crisper image (although you have no problems there) and more importantly will blur any distractions in the background.

All in all though you've produced a pleasing image with detail well held in his black clothing and in the light grey of the background. The focus is sharp and the contrast of the chains and the jumper lends a nice touch to a well-set up scene.

If you just had a cheap gold reflector and had set the aperture slightly lower and tilted his head upwards a small fraction I'd say you'd be nearly perfect there!

Rob

 

[DramaDork626]

Thanks alot ;D
Yes, the model had very small eyes, plus it was bright outside. So I had some issues catching full detail. But I see what you mean. But I took advantage of the bright day to try and get alot of shadows. I didn't know they would be distrcting.
As for mechanics, i don't have a manual camera, i only have a digital, which is all i can afford right now being a poor college student. But I try to make due.
But your critique was very helpful. I have since imrpoved the image. It's in my gallery.

 

[Corry]

Not sure if this will help you or not, but one tip I've learned for bright days when doing posed shots: Have them close their eyes so the sun is not bothering them and making them squint...count to three and on three have them open them and just as they open their eyes, take the picture. This helps to eliminate the squint.