B/W Portrait of Girl

[shnic]

Tip/suggestions are welcome...

 

[Trever1t]

Hmm, it's in landscape, vignetted heavily and a bit grainy.....love it! :thumbup:

 

[shnic]

Yeah, I normally do not prefer landscape myself either. I actually used CS5 to add texture to it to make it look aged. It does makes it look a little grainy though. Thanks for the feedback!

 

[sleist]

I like landscape orientation too, but if you have any room to work with, I think moving her head to the right from center would help.
Not if you lose any of the vertical though.

I need to express my feeling that watermarks hurt photos.
All you're doing is making your photo look worse than it should with no upside.
Put your copyright in your exif.

My 2 cents

 

[tirediron]

I'm not sure why, but I really like this image. It reminds me of a 30s era kodak capture. Nicely done.

 

[jake337]

I don't mind the landscape as she is nicely framed within the photo. The darker area, and arm on the left side of the frame are balanced out by the brighter area on the right side of the photo.

 

[shnic]

Thanks again for all of the suggestions and input!

 

[MK3Brent]

Needs a bigger signature on the photo.

On a serious note.
The face is blown out, it's grainy, subject is bulls-eye in the middle, vignetting is tacky.

 

[TCampbell]

I love it. And I know why I love it.

I don't think Trevor was beating you up over those issues. Every so often there is a photo that actually *should* be vignetted... or grainy, etc. The "problem" is that a lot of people just indiscriminately apply some processing effect with no particular reason why.

Apply this to cooking: Cheese goes well on my pasta... broccoli... and hot dogs. Therefore, cheese most go well on everything... so the next thing you know I'm using it as a ice-cream topping. There's a point where a good thing is just applied at the wrong time. Some of these effects take such a beating for being so overused that you'd get the idea that they just don't belong anywhere... ever.

Usually when I see a B&W I ask people "why" they decided to convert the image to B&W. Usually they don't know. Applying effects indiscriminately is like throwing notes into a song for no particularly reason. Some of those notes will sound really sour if they're out of place in the key or chord.

But look at the mood in this photo: She's got HUGE SAD EYES and her lips are curved down. Her hair is just a little unkept. Essentially you have a mood or emotion happening here and certain lighting and treatments will help drive that emotion. Your B&W treatment (which I normally reserve for images with structure, texture, pattern, etc.) actually helps the emotion. The same for the grain. Usually we'd offset her out of the middle, but in this shot it works. All of this feeds the emotion & mood of the image.

Nicely done.

 

[shnic]

Thanks @TCampbell...that is a very good point about not just throwing effects at a photo without knowing why and that is something I will keep in mind from now on!