Title: "Simone"
Camera / Lens: Canon 40D / Canon 17-55mm f/2.8 lens
6397 - Passo di Falzarego II
22 hours ago
Monday, November 10, 2008
Environmental Portrait - Simone
Last Thursday I went to the offices of a local accounting firm to practice shooting some portraits. Simone is a partner at the firm and was gracious enough to let me use her and some of here co-workers as guinea pigs to practice lighting with some new equipment I recently acquired. I went over on my lunch hour and had to work very quickly. I used two Vivitar 285HV strobes, one fired into a silver umbrella about 45% to Simone's right for the key light and one fired through a white umbrella to the left for fill. The flashes were fired with Pocket Wizards. I photographed six people in about 45 minutes. This was by far the best photo I took that day. This is the first time I attempted a shoot like this so I would really appreciate any feedback you can offer!
Title: "Simone"
Camera / Lens: Canon 40D / Canon 17-55mm f/2.8 lens
Title: "Simone"
Camera / Lens: Canon 40D / Canon 17-55mm f/2.8 lens
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6 comments:
Barry,
I think the lighting is very good. I do think the photograph might be improved with: (a) Simone moving a little to the camera right, thus getting the line away from her head and making the background a little more simple; (b) have Simone at a 45 degree angle from the camera and then having her turn into the camera--this should make her lines better and give you a little better shadows for depth within the photograph; and (c) you might consider an f-stop of 2.8 or wider to help soften the background-- a little too much of it is in focus (for me).
Still, very nice photograph. I think you are read to teach our next lighting course! Keep the good photos coming. I really enjoy them.
Patrick
Patrick
I also like the lighting, but her staring straight on at the camera is a little unsettling. I like the slope of her shoulders and the simplicity of her blouse and jewelry. Larry's excellent suggestions would definitely improve the image. I only wish I could do as well as you have done here!
So what are you covering for the next tutorial???
Cindi
Thanks for your comments Larry and Cindi!
Larry - This shot was done at f/2.8 which was all my lens could do. Because of the small room we were in I just couldn't get Simone any further than about two feet from the book case. I took the other portraits that day at f/4.0 or higher (I know...what was I thinking) and didn't get much background blur at all (live and
learn).
I'll have to give more thought to the posing suggestions because that is the hardest part for me to visualize!
I don't teaching tutorials in my immediate future but with a little more practice, who knows? :-)
Cheers!
Barry
Barry,
Nice work. 6 people in 45min? That's pretty good.
Here a few things I might consider for next time:
- As Patrick said, the line separating the two bookshelves is distracting.
- I like that you used both a key and fill light, but I think ratio wise they're too close, they come across as two keys which makes the light too busy. Also your fill light is so strong that it overrides the loop light pattern under the nose.
- I like the position of the catch light, but I think your umbrella was too far away. The shadow line on her cheek is pretty hard, especially with her features. A relatively larger light source would be helpful there. I would have raised the umbrella slightly higher too to increase the loop light pattern. Lighting the bottom of a nose is never flattering.
- I like the pose in general, but a bit of head tilt would soften it up. Also, the shoulder in the front is higher, which is a masculine pose (may go with her personality though), and you shot a short focal length which makes the shoulder very dominant in the picture. Backing up and shooting at 100mm+ would improve that. If you had her head turned, she should have turned it to the her right for two reasons - one is that crossing the camera axis from the broad light side is feminine, and her right eye is the smaller eye, which you want to haver further away from the camera.
- The background has nice DoF blur but is too bright. I would have pulled her further away from the background so that the light falls off further and the background is not quite a bright and competing for attention.
- If she would have been ok with it, I would have asked her to open her collar a bit more. For one you would have exposed her necklace more which adds visual appeal, but more importantly right now you have two strong vertical lines (the centerline of her collar triangle and her nose line, which are parallel but slightly offset). That's a visually dominant and unsettling element, probably what Cindi picked up on. The head tilt in combination with a wider open collar would solve that.
Sorry that became a long list of perfect world improvement. Not sure I would have seen all those in the moment on set, but staring at the pictures that's what came to mind...
Jan
Actually mistake on my part. The smaller eye has to be the one closer to the camera. So if you wanted to optimize for that, and also get the cross-camera axis part, you would have had to switch everything around.
Jan
Thanks for the comments Jan! I really apprciate your feedback!
I'm thinking that I need to recreate the shot at home with my daughter Emma and try all the posing and lighting suggestions you guys are making. That may be the only way I'll be able to really see the subtle differences the changes make on the final portrait!
Thanks again for your feedback!
Barry
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