My first portrait here!

[ConradoFreitag]

Hi guys!
I came to Vancouver in the begging of this year to study English, but I also began to study photography at Langara College.
So, I took this picture for an assignment of this course.
It was inside my apartment with natural light, a kind of reflector, my Canon t3i and a 50mm f1.8.

 

[Light Guru]

The focus needs to be on the eyes and not on the hair in front of the nose.

 

[ConradoFreitag]

The focus needs to be on the eyes and not on the hair in front of the nose.

That's pretty basic, but at the time I was shooting I didn't like the focus on the eyes because it wasn't helping to get the attention to the hair, so I tried to something different.
It didn't work so?

 

[Mel_Snyder]

Conrado, for a typical portrait, focus should always be on the eyes. However, with the proper lens and posing, the focus COULD be on the hair, not the eyes. But to make that work, you would have to create a pose where the hair-to-eyes distance was great enough to make the eyes VERY out of focus. One technique would be to use a fast, long (tele) lens and have your model lean slightly forward. Then, carefully light the hair so the eyes/face are considerably darker than the hair.

To pull off such a portrait requires a lot of skill.

Right now, your portrait suffers from insufficient depth of field to keep both the hair and the eyes in focus. A smaller aperture could get both in focus.

Lighting just the tip of the nose is another issue. Your light is so far to the side that her hair blocks her face. If the hair on her left side had been pushed back behind her ear, the light could have nicely reached her face in a more balanced manner.

She's an attractive model, and clearly you are close to a very good portrait - why not re-shoot?

Mel

 

[AmberAtLoveAndInk]

Does no one like it? I think the hair laying is quite interesting but I think you cropped a bit too much. At a higher angle and a little more room in the frame I think it would look much nicer. Still interesting, IMO.

 

[W.Fovall]

looks nice.. would have shot around f4 to get eyes and hair both focused if that's what you were going for.. don't really need to blur the background on such a tight crop.. and I would focus allot of attention on each strand to get the iris of the eye to be visible through the hair.. good work.. you have a color version?

 

[mmaria]

Conrado, for a typical portrait, focus should always be on the eyes. However, with the proper lens and posing, the focus COULD be on the hair, not the eyes. But to make that work, you would have to create a pose where the hair-to-eyes distance was great enough to make the eyes VERY out of focus. One technique would be to use a fast, long (tele) lens and have your model lean slightly forward. Then, carefully light the hair so the eyes/face are considerably darker than the hair.

To pull off such a portrait requires a lot of skill.

Right now, your portrait suffers from insufficient depth of field to keep both the hair and the eyes in focus. A smaller aperture could get both in focus.

Lighting just the tip of the nose is another issue. Your light is so far to the side that her hair blocks her face. If the hair on her left side had been pushed back behind her ear, the light could have nicely reached her face in a more balanced manner.

She's an attractive model, and clearly you are close to a very good portrait - why not re-shoot?

Mel

Will you stick around here Mel? TPF needs people who write critique like this Welcome !

 

[keyseddie]

Technical imperfections aside, the image is extremely sexy.

 

[ConradoFreitag]

Thank you very much guys!
Mel, amazing comment, thanks for spending your time on that!
I'll write down the tips and I hope I can re-shoot it.