Musician in nature

[texxter]

In my photography I like to find ways to present women as being not only beautiful, but also smart and with individual talents. This picture of a young cellist was made in the wide median of a boulevard near home in the suburbs. I waited until near sunset to get a low directional sunlight as hair and rim light. The main light is a strobe in a softbox positioned to the right of the camera. The city plants wildflowers in this location and I wanted to combine the natural spring scenery with the feeling of music played by a lovely young woman. I don't think this image would work without the rim/hair light, which separates the subject from the background but also helps create an angelical feel of youthfulness that I really like.

 

[BrentC]

Beautiful. And I appreciate that in your posts you describe your setup and the reasoning behind it. Even though I haven't delved into portrait work yet, between you , @DanOstergren and others, I have been filing away knowledge.

 

[smoke665]

Excellent pose and setup. Only one small thing that I noted is the skin tone. Looked at it on a couple of different devices and found it more so on some them others. On the neck and chest area there seem to be different tones. (neck camera right and over the front of the chest), Could just be the reflections off the instrument, or shadow. I've had issues with dark skin, never seeming to get it right, so it may just be me.

 

[Christie Photo]

On the neck and chest area there seem to be different tones. (neck camera right and over the front of the chest), Could just be the reflections off the instrument...

Yup. I can't imagine it could be anything but that.

Nicely done!

-Pete

 

[DanOstergren]

Great shot. My only critique is that I notice a desaturated area on her chest/ shoulder, which could be fixed with some quick adjustment layer masking, or maybe with an overall increase of color temperature in the white balance.

**edit**
Just noticed Smoke pointed this out already.

 

[texxter]

Beautiful. And I appreciate that in your posts you describe your setup and the reasoning behind it. Even though I haven't delved into portrait work yet, between you , @DanOstergren and others, I have been filing away knowledge.

Photographing people is very rewarding! One of the reasons it's so interesting is that one has a broad range of ways to go about it, all of them valid and quite different at the same time. In this case I had a vision of the image I wanted to create in my head prior to even finding the talent to work with... down to the rim light, the expression, the flowers. It only needed to be executed decently. Other times the creation follows a completely different process - there is no predefined vision... instead one looks for a special moment, expression, emotion, that is genuine. And often it's something in between, where I have chosen an interesting location and want "low key" portraits, so I have an idea of what I want, but the actual images are not predefined. So every portrait interaction can be completely different and all of them can be lots of fun!

 

[texxter]

On the neck and chest area there seem to be different tones. (neck camera right and over the front of the chest), Could just be the reflections off the instrument...

Yup. I can't imagine it could be anything but that.

Nicely done!

-Pete

Thank you so much for your comments. I took this picture a while ago but I seem to remember that she had a funky sun tan from a bathing suite. I didn't bother to change her skin tonality because the musician really liked this image and I didn't want to change her appearance. But I could be missremembering and it's a shadow... would need to go back to the raw file to get more of a clue.

Great shot. My only critique is that I notice a desaturated area on her chest/ shoulder, which could be fixed with some quick adjustment layer masking, or maybe with an overall increase of color temperature in the white balance.

**edit**
Just noticed Smoke pointed this out already.

Yes, thank you!

 

[Dean_Gretsch]

Great concept and I agree with you about the halo effect on her hair. Nice expression on her face too.

 

[tirediron]

Nicely done.

 

[enezdez]

I like it, very nice!