Outdoor Portraiture - Evangeline

abovenormphotos · Aug 5, 2014

Hey all..

Sharing some photos to get some critique and comments on how and where I can improve.

Thanks in advance!

Cheers.

Evangeline #1

Outdoor Portraiture by AboveNorm, on Flickr

abovenormphotos · Aug 5, 2014

Evangeline #2

Outdoor Portraiture by AboveNorm, on Flickr

abovenormphotos · Aug 5, 2014

Evangeline #3

Outdoor Portraiture by AboveNorm, on Flickr

ronlane · Aug 5, 2014

IMHO, they are a little too dark. #2 needs some fill light so that you don't get the "raccoon eyes". #3 would be my favorite, I think with the whole scene being lighter and using DOF to blur the background some.

Derrel · Aug 5, 2014

I think the degree of skin smoothing gives these an unpleasant aura of artificiality. Her skin appears to be glowing against the dark background in #1 and #2. The woman looks to be not over 22 years old...her skin is probably pretty good. And I agree with what Ron mentioned, that these appear a bit too dark, and that #2 needs something done to help her eyes come out more, like some dodging in post, and also I would probably clone-in a fake catchlight on the eye that has the tiny one, just because I like to see eye-sparkle and fairly similar catchlights on shots like this.

Braineack · Aug 5, 2014

yeah, they all seem just a bit underexposed.

I agree about #2, there's no light in her eyes.

abovenormphotos · Aug 5, 2014

Thanks for the response guys.

I'm quite regretful about #2 as well. I used an external light source. But couldn't hit the eyes. I think I placed the lights too high. Lesson learned.
I tried for an hour to recover the lost detail and give the eyes a sparkle. But it looked too artificial and so I decided to do without it. Shall revisit it and look for some good videos.

All generally underexposed? Ok shall take note of that. Cos other than for #3, that wasn't my intention. Thanks for pointing it out!

abovenormphotos · Aug 5, 2014

Derell-- oh no. I thought I had nailed the skin smoothrning. Don't think it looked artificial. Sigh. Well, she has generally nice skin but I thought a skin smoothening would produce better results. Must go revisit it. Thanks!