Another coworker, CC is welcome =)

[Vtec44]

So another coworker and I coerced a third coworker to pose for us. Here are some pictures from my camera. I think I have the metering and exposure down on my new camera consistently. I personally like the dark and high contrast photographs, especially for males, so my pictures tend to be a bit under exposed. I feel that my portraits are boring and typical. So any suggestions for me to improve is welcome.

Thanks in advance for all the comments, good and bad.


1.

2. Same pose but a bit closer to remove all limbs..

3.

 

[lyonsroar]

Was he feeling blue at the time of the shoot?

 

[tirediron]

I'm going to agree; these are NOT the most exciting portraits. Two reasons that I see right off. The first is lighting. In each image he has a bad case of raccoon eyes, with little to no catchlight. Try using a reflector low, image left and aimed up to get some fill light and provide a definite catchlight to his eye. Also look at your backgrounds; they're softly focused, to a degree, but still very busy and distracting. Try a spot where the background isn't going to be so obvious. Be especially careful of lateral bisection of limbs such as the forearm in #1.

 

[Vtec44]

Thanks!

I didn't realize the backgrounds are soft focus. I intentionally "bokeh" them, although lightly. On another note, I love the 50mm f/1.8 lens. It's extremely sharp, well at least compare to my other lenses.

Back to more practicing....

 

[tirediron]

Just to pick a nit: "Bokeh" is a term used to describe the way your lens renders the unfocused elements of the scene. It's not something that you can "do" except as far as choosing a larger aperture. When I use the term "softly focused" I mean that through the use of a large aperture, you have avoided having too much background focus, which is extremely distracting.

 

[Vtec44]

Just to pick a nit: "Bokeh" is a term used to describe the way your lens renders the unfocused elements of the scene. It's not something that you can "do" except as far as choosing a larger aperture. When I use the term "softly focused" I mean that through the use of a large aperture, you have avoided having too much background focus, which is extremely distracting.

Thanks. I "control" bokeh by either using larger aperture or focal length. On a fixed lens, I had my coworker sat a bit farther away from the background to increase the distance of the subject from the background. I was relatively closer to the subject than the subject to the background, but I didn't want the black ground to be completely blurred out. The lens' max aperture is f/1.8 but I shot at f/2.5. I could have used a larger aperture and sat him a bit closer, but chose not to do that. In my case, I prefer to use distance this time to avoid taking pictures at wide open aperture. Although, I'll give that a shot next time.

 

[jritz]

I've never seen a 55mm 1.8 lens for nikon.... Also watch your saturation, its a little hot in these.

 

[Vtec44]

oops... I meant 50mm

Thanks. Yeah I shot these in Vivid mode. I'm still playing around with the settings on the camera to see which combination is best. It has way too many options. lol