Natural Light Portraits take 2!

[DisasterDan]

I recently picked up a canon 50 1.4 and tossed my sigma 50 onto craigslist. I must say, im liking it alot more. It has a few focus flaws, mostly shooting with a backlit subject towards the sun, but nonetheless its a great lens. Anywho, here are three pictures i took lastnight. The first one im looking for just c&c on composition and everything else, NOT so much the posing obviously. The last one however i would like a "Full" C&C in a sense. Thanks for any input!

And of course tear em' up.


QW1K2653 by Daniel Palmerton, on Flickr

QW1K2614 by Daniel Palmerton, on Flickr

 

[KmH]

Shooting in available light does not mean you just accept what light there is.

You still have to use basic photographic lighting principles, like having a main light and a fill light. You still have to be mindful of the visual weight levels of luminosity has in a scene.

So when only using ambient light the sky usually is used as the main light and reflectors, diifusers, lights subtractors, etc, are used for fill, kickers, hair light, back light, etc.

in #1 his eye sockets are dark (raccoon eyes) and he is under exposed. Unfortunately, by using Flickr the EXIF data is stripped out of the photo so neither photo shows what camera settings you used. You should post that info when you want C&C.

In #2 again he is under exposed.

What metering mode did you use?

 

[DisasterDan]

Shooting in available light does not mean you just accept what light there is.

You still have to use basic photographic lighting principles, like having a main light and a fill light. You still have to be mindful of the visual weight levels of luminosity has in a scene.

So when only using ambient light the sky usually is used as the main light and reflectors, diifusers, lights subtractors, etc, are used for fill, kickers, hair light, back light, etc.

in #1 his eye sockets are dark (raccoon eyes) and he is under exposed. Unfortunately, by using Flickr the EXIF data is stripped out of the photo so neither photo shows what camera settings you used. You should post that info when you want C&C.

In #2 again he is under exposed.

What metering mode did you use?

Dagnabit. I used spot metering, and metered for the subjects.

 

[Destin]

That lens has some harsh bokeh. wow.

I'll let others comment on the first one. What I notice about the second one is that it is underexposed. I also don't like the position his left hand is in, it just seems awkward to me. I'm also not a big fan of where he is looking, I'd rather have him looking at the camera with his eyes open in this pose, I just think it would work better.

As for the underexposure, it could easily be fixed in post. Since your photos are ok to edit, I threw it through LR3 quick.

All I did was up the fill light a tad, add some contrast, and warm up the color temp just a little as it looked pretty cool.