Tungsten portrait :P

Fedaykin · Jul 13, 2010

Just some quick shots while playing some billiards with my gf at my house. She wanted me to take her picture for some reason so I grabbed the camera(she NEVER asks me to take her picture). I had to improvise though. It was like 9pm and I don't have strobes yet. So I grabbed a lamp I have there, it goes on a 5 foot stand and has three tungsten bulbs inside metal cone like housings which would work sort of like a snoot of a strobe; so it was pretty harsh light.

I had to place it like a foot from her face to get as soft a light as possible and to get a decent enough exposure, I believe these where at f/2.8, 1/100 and ISO 200 or something like that. Due to the one direct light and dark background(only lit by a couple of really weak lamps on the corner walls), they pretty much look like they were shot against a black background so I guess that worked for the better.

C&C is welcome as always, but mainly looking for it editing-wise as other than that these were very quick shots and am aware of their flaws(though you can point them out if you want

). I suck at PP though, so feel free to tell me how good/bad these are in terms of WB, color saturation, etc. I deliberately edited these slightly different from each other for this purpose, wasn't sure which one looked best and what mood(low-key,highish-key, etc.) I wanted. Anyways here they are:

1.

2.

3.

Thanks for looking!

P.S. Forgot to mention that if anyone wants a hand at editing these feel free. I can provide high res versions(pre sharpening) as well. I have the RAW files too, though I'm not sure how I would go about providing those here...

ivomitcats · Jul 13, 2010

Here's my quick edit. Her face is a little blown out, tried to tone it down.

Edit:
That's weird, I upload it on here and it looks like I screwed with the gamma. :drool:

Doesn't look that way on PS. Hm...

Fedaykin · Jul 13, 2010

ivomitcats said:
Here's my quick edit. Her face is a little blown out, tried to tone it down.

Edit:
That's weird, I upload it on here and it looks like I screwed with the gamma.
Doesn't look that way on PS. Hm...

I like the retouching on it. I have got to learn retouching.

JasonLambert · Jul 13, 2010

You had great eyes in the photo... The problem with the edits done to them were they deadened the eyes a bit.

shmne · Jul 13, 2010

Ivomitcats said that her face was overexposed, this is actually not true at all. Overexposed means that there is a loss of details in the brightest areas, and it is pretty clear that the photo has no loss of detail anywhere.

More importantly however, the skin tone is just off a bit. Little too yellow, not very flattering.
Other than that however, I understand there was not much light going on but you could have increased your ISO to get more DOF. It bothers me looking at a face where I can't tell what is immediately in focus and what isn't. When her face is angled her left side of her face is sharp, then her lips are out of focus as well as the right side of her face.

This could be a stylistic choice however it is important to keep in mind that you would want more of the lips and nose in focus as that helps the viewer see the face better (the eyes are generally the most important, but you can not forget the other key features!)

The rest of the processing seems fine to me, pretty light handed. Nice job overall!

Fedaykin · Jul 13, 2010

JasonLambert said:
You had great eyes in the photo... The problem with the edits done to them were they deadened the eyes a bit.

Oh I really like that edit, thanks!

shmne said:
Ivomitcats said that her face was overexposed, this is actually not true at all. Overexposed means that there is a loss of details in the brightest areas, and it is pretty clear that the photo has no loss of detail anywhere.

More importantly however, the skin tone is just off a bit. Little too yellow, not very flattering.
Other than that however, I understand there was not much light going on but you could have increased your ISO to get more DOF. It bothers me looking at a face where I can't tell what is immediately in focus and what isn't. When her face is angled her left side of her face is sharp, then her lips are out of focus as well as the right side of her face.

This could be a stylistic choice however it is important to keep in mind that you would want more of the lips and nose in focus as that helps the viewer see the face better (the eyes are generally the most important, but you can not forget the other key features!)

The rest of the processing seems fine to me, pretty light handed. Nice job overall!

Thanks for the tip. You're completely right. I've been reading up on retouching since I posted this, really want to learn. Thanks for the encouragement.