Dragon Ball

[WillEpps]

This is a photo from my first "real" photo shoot
For a local hair salon near my home town
D300 50mm f1.8 @ 50mm f4
SB900's left and right of camera soft box left below cam and shoot thru umbrella above right

Was hard to avoid the mirrors!

Here is another from the same shoot
SB900s all to cameras right , one far away behind model thru umbrella one close to cameras right bounced off neutral wall, with a gold reflector shining ambient sunlight onto her form the window behind me

And last but not least the other model shot on that shoot, was trying to get the colour in her hair so used 3 speed lights all thru umbrellas from above, left and right of camera, after a good few shots i finally managed to get the light right, but i still think its lacking....

 

[bigtwinky]

I'm not an expert on lighting, but it seems to be well done. I'll let someone else with more expertise chime in.
Did you do any post processing on these?

1- While her face is clean, her arms and legs should be softened some.
I find her gaze to the upper right is a bit forced.
Great job getting the hair colour smack on though.
The glass on camera left is cut.
I like seeing the chandelier in the mirror, would of loved to see more of it. But shooting with mirrors can be a serious pain hehe.
Nice job overall

2- I'm not into the overall composition. I like the models pose, but I don't like the greyness of the wall on camera left and the fact that there is so much.
While a bit hard, maybe shooting from above the model would of been interesting, having more of the painting in the picture.
The wall also needs some PP clean up

3- I think this is my fave from the 3, mainly because I know the main focus is the model. Nice job with composition, specially with so many elements in the picture to worry about.
Nice pose too.
Maybe a slight crop of the right side (past her feet) to balance it out more as there is more space on camera right than on camera left.

I'm still a budding photographer, and I find pictures like these are great to help me learn and see what is being done. Nice job and thanks for posting!

 

[LaFoto]

Sorry to be the next commenting, even though I'm one to know NOTHING about proper lighting, NOTHING about shooting models, and nothing about posing and making best use of all the elements you have to work with and think about in a shoot like this one.

But what I do see are the legs of the Redhead in White, and they look like she's freezing herself to death there and in her outfit. They look positively mottled, and I think that's something which really needs to be worked on.

Other than that, through my lay-woman's eyes, they look pretty professionally done!

 

[Overread]

Sorry another lighting knownothing to comment! (I am sure someone will appear who knows about light soon).

I have to agree very much with LaFoto's view with regard to the legs in the first two shots - a lot of work has clearly gone into the head and hair and that appears to be the main focus of both photos, but what you end up with is a very sharp contrast between the makeup and lighting on the face, and the lack of makup and darker colours on the legs - it really stands out in the second shot and proves to be a distracting element to the shot.

for the mirrors you could have tried using a polarizer to cut down on reflection problems form them - even though the angled sections might have made things tricky, it might have helped somewhat overall.

Also looking at the first two shots it really looks like you were going for a portrate look (ignoring the colours of the legs for the moment) but decided to include the lower body - in the first she appears to have her legs cut off at around the knee (apparently one should never cut off limbs like that at a joint from what I have read)
In the first I would also have been tempted to move the frame a little more to the right - to have just a bit more of the frame in the direction she is looking and to decentre her head abit.

The second shot I can see what you were going for, but I feel as if the mirror and light reflected in it are perhapse dominating the top most left corner a bit and leaving your model looking rather small and less important. I can see that you wanted to have both in the shot and sadly I can't really say how you could keep both but make the model a more dominate element,.

 

[WillEpps]

Cheers for the feedback guys constructive criticism is the best

As for the legs yeah they are a bit sketchy, but I'm not a big fan of editing cause it never works out for me! haha
these shots are straight from camera

I will try smoothing the legs out a tad and add them as a reply

but i dont promise anything good! haha

 

[jedi32277]

I have not photographed people yet still I dont know the right way to light a person for still photography. But I have lit people for film(use to make local ads for cable). It looks like you could try softening the light on her a bit. I'm guessing she has pale skin, and thats why it looks a little blown out. I could be wrong, like I said I'm not an expert.