Outdoor Senior Girl Portrait

[Tally Ho]

When doing outdoor portraits lots of photographers first look for a great background, then hope the lighting is good. This is backward. One should find good portrait lighting THEN see what the background is doing, especially with the advent of Photoshop, because in Photoshop one can do a miriad of things to the background and no one will ever know. Of course if you have the ability to artifically create great lighting outdoors with some electronic flash units or by bouncing it around with a reflector or using subtractive gobos, that is even better, but I try and use the soft natural lighting found outdoors whenever possible. In the image below Natalie is leaning against a tree that is naturally bent 30 degrees from vertical, then I tipped the entire image in Photoshop an additional 6 degees or so to give it some more dynamism. All natural lighting. I removed the unusually shaped original catchlights in Photoshop and put some round ones in. Original on Kodak 400NC film. Exposure f 5.6 at 1/30. I also use this pose for the larger gal since about 1/3rd to 1/2 of her body is hidden behind the tree, but it doesn't look like we were trying to hide those extra pounds.

Tally Ho

 

[terri]

Gorgeous job. I like the idea of the tilt, very nice and it works here beautifully. :thumbup:

 

[Alison]

Of the senior shots that you've posted I like this one by far the best. The lighting is great and the background is not distracting. I have also used trees as props in photoshoots because it seems to help the model relax and adds some texture to the image. Very nice shot.

 

[Christie Photo]

Nice! I would have advised different clothing for this shoot.

 

[photogoddess]

Spot on with this shot. :thumbsup:

 

[Sharkbait]

Overall, this looks great. The one thing I'm concerned about is the mouth/teeth. Too much gum and it looks like a bad whitening job in PS.