First Portraits - Kristin

snotshake · Jun 15, 2007

EDITED WITH NEW PICS!!!

This morning I set up a photo shoot with my long time friend Kristin for her senior pictures. I've only had my XT for a few months now and this was my first time taking portraits. I'm seriously considering picking up a Tamron 17-50 2.8 very soon but I took these with the kit lens.

I know the lens isn't very sharp when opened wide but I felt I needed to do it in order to get a shorter DOF. I took these in aperture priority at roughly f/5. I applied a sharpen mask to some of them to help them out a bit.

I uploaded in Photobucket and had it resize them so I know I lost a lot of quality there.

I'm looking for honesty here. I'm having trouble deciding if I should crop some of these slightly or leave them as is.

1.

2. I think this one shows her personality the best

3.

4.

5. My favorite, look at those eyes! :eyebrows:

6.

7.

8. One just for fun

9. Edit Bonus

All in all, I had a very fun time and will plan on doing more portrait photography in the future. I found it easier than I thought it would be and it helped having such a beautiful subject.

dgs · Jun 15, 2007

Nice series. I think #1 could benefit from some editing on brightness/contrast, but you've really nailed light nicely on 2,3,5 & 6. Good work (and she is lovely)

Nitpiks are exposure on 1 and bags under eyes on a couple. 7 has some pretty hard shadows.

I'd be happy to have shot these, I know!

snotshake · Jun 15, 2007

Thanks for the response! I was trying to soften the bags a little on #2. Are you supposed to clone them out? What is the best method to remove these?

i agree about #7. It isn't my favorite but I think it is a really "cute" pic that the girl will like. :biggrin:

NJMAN · Jun 15, 2007

snotshake said:
Thanks for the response! I was trying to soften the bags a little on #2. Are you supposed to clone them out? What is the best method to remove these?

i agree about #7. It isn't my favorite but I think it is a really "cute" pic that the girl will like.

Usually the healing brush works best for skin touch-ups. But the clone tool will work too. It depends on if you get a sample that is the same tone and the area you are trying to fix. The healing brush blends better IMO.

oldnavy170 · Jun 15, 2007

I think you did a wonderful job on your portraits. The only thing I see is your shots lack sharpness and the sky looks very white in #1. Which you can fix most of that in your photo editing program.

dgs · Jun 15, 2007

I usually pull a duplicate layer and then use a combination of clone tool, healing brush and brightness level to retouch the problem area. Then adjusting the opacity of the doctored layer makes it pretty easy to find the sweet spot that solves the problem without looking processed. When happy I merge the layer down. Make sure you reduce the brush density when using either a clone tool or healing brush. . . helps those blend issues. I sometimes get down as low as 7% or so, although that soft probably isn't needed.

I'm just a self taught tinkerer with latent tendancies towards "Ozark Engineering" . . . there is probably a better way to do it, but this does work.

dgs · Jun 15, 2007

Quick and Dirty as described above

inserting doesn't seem to be working for me . . here's the link:

http://i82.photobucket.com/albums/j255/First235/Picture014ps.jpg

stellar_gal · Jun 15, 2007

Overall decent work IMO. #1 & 6 have too much empty space at the top. Other than the editing as mentioned above, nothing too drastic. Compositions were pretty good I think, but also take shots from differents angles and heights- like in #6- if you had moved to the left a little and showed a little more of her front it would look better to me, but it does have nice color. The jewelry is quite distracting IMO too- but not your fault- it probably fits her personality more than it is appealing.

snotshake · Jun 15, 2007

I like that "bag removal" technique. Seems to work pretty well.

I agree about #1, the sky is definitely blown out. I think it happened because she was sorta in the shade of the tree, therefore making it meter way too bright. Any suggestion on how to improve this without flash?

As far as #6, I think it has too much space on top and I took a lot with her further to the right. I wanted to get the flowers in the shot and keep it a 4x6 so it got left the way it was.

The jewelry removed any chance of a black and white picture happening as well as drew a little too much attention with the white beads. I tried burning them down a bit but realized they needed to be bright in order to look correct.

Keep the comments coming. I really appreciate all the criticism!

BTW, I further edited the shots by removing the bags, the man walking in #4 and adding a bit of a fade out in the corners of 2, 3 and 4. I'll try to post up soon.

NJMAN · Jun 15, 2007

snotshake said:
I like that "bag removal" technique. Seems to work pretty well.

I agree about #1, the sky is definitely blown out. I think it happened because she was sorta in the shade of the tree, therefore making it meter way too bright. Any suggestion on how to improve this without flash?

As far as #6, I think it has too much space on top and I took a lot with her further to the right. I wanted to get the flowers in the shot and keep it a 4x6 so it got left the way it was.

The jewelry removed any chance of a black and white picture happening as well as drew a little too much attention with the white beads. I tried burning them down a bit but realized they needed to be bright in order to look correct.

Keep the comments coming. I really appreciate all the criticism!

BTW, I further edited the shots by removing the bags, the man walking in #4 and adding a bit of a fade out in the corners of 2, 3 and 4. I'll try to post up soon.

I really like your edits! Nice job. Great looking girl.

NJ

Big Mike · Jun 18, 2007

Great series, nice use of fill flash. Having a very pretty girl as a model doesn't hurt either.

craig · Jun 18, 2007

2, 3 and 5 are my faves. Love the water background and the bridge in 5. I think her earrings are really distracting. I would almost scrap the shoot because of them.

Love & Bass

schumionbike · Jun 19, 2007

Very nice series over all, I would probably tried to blur the background more in number 4 as that picture have a lot of potential. Did you shoot a lot of vertical frame pictures? They work pretty well for portrait. My favorite shot here is number 5, very well done!