Rebekah

[SoulfulRecover]

Very nice lady that I got to shoot this past weekend:

 

[FITBMX]

Nice set!

 

[DanOstergren]

Love the first and last one. The light has some nice depth and sculpts her features well.

 

[tirediron]

Agree; nicely lit. Good set.

 

[SoulfulRecover]

Thank you guys! #3 is hands down my favorite. #2 I had to bring up the shadows a lot in post in the eye area because they were so dark even with the reflector. Im guessing the angle of reflection was off but I did what I could in post. She seemed very pleased with them and Im glad she wanted them in B&W. There were some make up issues noticeable in #2 as well. Her foundation got brushed up along her side burn and ear lobe so the color did not match/look natural in that area. very bronze/warm and Im not sure how I could have fixed that haha

 

[Derrel]

Shots 1 and 2 demonstrate an interesting difference in lighting on so-called facial flaws (I dislike that terms, but that's what the term is...), like the bump on her nose. the 'secret' is always to light the flaw...in shot #1 the bump area on her nose is closest to the light and it is "lighted", whereas in #2, the bump is away from the light, and the shadow makes it reveal more. Shot #3, also my favorite, has pretty much equal light on the nose on both sides, and it maximizes her features nicely!

It's amazing how high-rez your new camera is!!!

 

[SoulfulRecover]

It's amazing how high-rez your new camera is!!!

Its amazing how much detail you see now. I tried editing a file from the D300 (the black and white chest/shoulders shot on Instagram) and couldn't believe how low of detail it was haha

 

[Braineack]

the bottom catch light in the eyes is bothering me a bit, but lovely overall.

 

[SoulfulRecover]

the bottom catch light in the eyes is bothering me a bit, but lovely overall.

Any particular reason why?

 

[DanOstergren]

Do you dodge and burn when you edit? This is completely based off of personal taste, but you could even out her skin tone a little bit by doing some careful dodging on certain areas of the skin.

 

[SoulfulRecover]

Do you dodge and burn when you edit? This is completely based off of personal taste, but you could even out her skin tone a little bit by doing some careful dodging on certain areas of the skin.

No I don't. Ive tried in the past but Im not that great at it.

 

[Braineack]

the bottom catch light in the eyes is bothering me a bit, but lovely overall.

Any particular reason why?

They are as bright as the "natural" ones from above, but the lightening pattern doesn't seem to match

using tapatalk.

 

[Derrel]

the bottom catch light in the eyes is bothering me a bit, but lovely overall.

Any particular reason why?

I think the issue with the lower eye catchlights arises mainly because the images are in B&W, and in B&W tonal variations are very,very noticeable, and the second one is that the reflecting surface itself, seems quite bright. My gut feeling is this is a smallish silver reflector under her chin, and it is close to her, and it is being "lit up" by the main light. If it were a really wiiiiiide reflector, like say a six foot wide fabric on a frame, it might create a broad catchlight that goes across a good portion of the lower eyeball. The thing is though--the bottom of the eye catchlight is seen as an almost-specular and very intense reflection, and it is positioned over a significantly darker part of the eyeball. I think in COLOR, this catchlight would be much less noticeable, but in B&W, really crisp, bright spots like this stand out.

What exactly was the under-chine reflector type and color?

I'm not sure how the average, non-photographer type of person really views catchlights; my feeling is that the general public people "see them but do not really SEE them" the same way we photographers do. But I KNOW that some types of catchlights ARE seen and liked, such as the odd catchlights that ring lights can create. And sometimes, if an umbrella or octa is too close, it reflects itself over the whole central part of the eyeball, which gives an awful, sort of cataract-like look, which is just simply hideous-looking.

In this case, the main light is pretty high, and the upper part of the modifier's catchlight is hidden by her eyelids, but the lower-eye catchlight from the under-chin reflector is always very bright, very fully shown.

I dunno...this is very close-up "face work"...I think you'll find that there are opinions some people will have about the catchlights as they relate to the overall photo look. I sometimes think it's better to use an actual fill light right next to the camera from 15 feet or so, with the main light at 3-5 feet, so that the secondary catchlight falls right on the black part of the eye, smack-dab in the middle, and is very,very tiny and round. We've had a few discussions on this over the years...I think most people find it esoteric and maybe even pretentious to talk about this stuff, kind of like the way wine snobs talk about imagined qualities in wines in tasting flights...

 

[SoulfulRecover]

It was a silver reflector under her chin. One of those 5 in 1 deals I was having the wifey hold