What do you think about this portrait?

[Compaq]

It had to be square format.

 

[ronlane]

To me, it's under exposed.

 

[DanOstergren28 4]

Definitely under exposed.

 

[Virgil]

Needs more lighting.

 

[Compaq]

Please elaborate. Is her face too dark? Are those not "normal" skin tones? Her white top is almost blown. The background has been slightly darkened to make the person stand out more.

 

[AggieBecky]

Yes, I think her face is significantly underexposed.

 

[ronlane]

I pulled it down and imported it into LR4. To me the WB was a little off and I increased the exposure 1.07 (a stop) and the white shirt is not showing blown out (well not clipping).

 

[JustJazzie]

Besides the previous comments, I think I would have really preferred the subject to be further away from the grass for a little more background blur.

 

[Compaq]

I checked on another screen which is better calibrated, and the image was suddenly much darker; I think the brightness setting on my mac has fooled me. Your edit is very nice.

Now, apart from this exposure problem, what do you think about the portrait?

(This is what I really wanted opinions on)

 

[ronlane]

I checked on another screen which is better calibrated, and the image was suddenly much darker; I think the brightness setting on my mac has fooled me. Your edit is very nice.

Now, apart from this exposure problem, what do you think about the portrait?

(This is what I really wanted opinions on)

I would agree a little bit with Jazzie about separation of the subject and then one little nitpicky thing would be to watch the top of her head where she has a few blades of grass "growing out" of her head.

 

[Derrel]

It had to be square format.

White balance is very cool, needs higher Kelvin point. I see a lot of CA on the edges of the white shirt. She's lighted by very flat, low-contrast shade lighting, which has very little definition. The image appears low in technical quality, like it was badly underexposed then "rescued". Ron's edit is a good start. If you shot it in raw, you have a chance at successfully rescuing it. Her expression is a bit...unorthodox. She has an almost early Renaissance era type of beauty and dignity about her.

 

[jaomul]

I don't know the person but to me the expression is not very natural

 

[Compaq]

Oh, that's her natural and relaxed expression, alright - though maybe she has a faint Mona Lisa kind of smile

I used a really old lens with an olympus-to-canon adapter for this shot; that most likely caused the chromatic aberrations. She got a research grant for her master's thesis, and they required "a photograph in green environments" for their website. The image will be small: about 8 cm square. I manually focused, and decided sharpness was not very important in this context. I could either take this in harsh sunlight, or in the shade. As for the pose and facial expression, I know less than nothing about this. We found an image where she was not blinking or looking weird; we both agreed on this one.

Also, I initially shot this in "portrait format", but I realized all the images of the previous grant-winners were square, so I had to crop; they needed the image that day.

I appreciate the comments. Some people (wrongfully) rely on my for their CV photographs

I tried to bring up the exposure myself:

 

[AggieBecky]

Here's my shot at an edit..... Once I got it in PP I felt like the focus/sharpness wasn't very good. I like my pictures bright so I had to increase the exposure by +1.50. I adjusted the white balance and warmed it up. I increased contrast, whites, and clarity. Added a bit of a vignette and edited her eyes and lips.

 

[Derrel]

Now, apart from this exposure problem, what do you think about the portrait?

(This is what I really wanted opinions on)

The biggest problem is the ORIGINAL exposure or the original raw conversion: there is a spot on her hair, on the right side of the frame, where there is a weird color cast, and also a deep, dark, detail-less spot. I tried to hide that, and made a few efforts to make a nice picture out of this. I think she's a beautiful young woman. I don't want to waste time editing a low-rez file, but if I had the desire to edit this, I would paint on a COLOR to her shirt. A pure white shirt is very distracting at the edge of a frame, and takes attention from the face. I quickly re-touched her under eye areas; perhaps more than she might like to see. The green background is tricky; not sure what effect you wanted to convey-backlighting? Or not?


This is my reduced green luminosity/saturation rendering of your image.


This is my cold-tone B&W rendering of your image.


This is what I refer to as a cream-tone B&W rendering of your image.


Here is the image with the Sigma 15mm lens profile affixed to it, just for a fun, whimsical, House-of-Mirrors rendering!