Samantha 540 Nik Dynamic Skin Softener & Photoshop Sepia

A classic, in my opinion. However, when I entered it in the local

county fair under B/W portraits, it got nothing and I'm not sure why.

Got any ideas? Is it really that bad a portrait?

A very beautiful picture

 

I know it always hurts when you have done your best to have no one notice your achievement. When I taught high school photography I invited a local photographer to come in and judge a group of final prints that my students had made. He gave the lowest score to one that I thought was wonderful. The boy who made it wanted to throw it away. I convinced him to enter it in an art contest and it took top prize! The art teacher hardly spoke to me the rest of the year.

 

I think your image is very well lighted and posed and it captures textures and tonality very well. I like the highlight in the eye that is brightly lit, but am a little sorry the other eye is in shadow.

 

If you were my student I would remind you of a couple of things: square formats are not popular and when the subject looks to one side of the photo, it is usually better to make the distance to that margin longer than the other. Some say "give the eyes room to look." Others make it into a rule that the nose should be dead center in the picture from left to right. Maybe those are two ways of saying the same thing.

 

I suggest you play with cropping to see if the composition could be made stronger and I believe a vertical rectangle would best support your intent.

 

Regards,

 

Jerry

Sorry, can't see anything wrong with it. Even the slightly shadowed eye is just right to me. Forget about all the old framing rules - i believe they are rubbish and i've been shooting for 30 years professionally. Frame the way you think best and it will come to you. Obviously the photo above shows that you have it. Move on and keep taking lots more shots like that and you will get attention.

Very nice portrait no problems to pick on different tastes of the judges on the day. Very good shot.

Gerecht --,

 

Art judges (having been one) are a fickled lot. Whether your photograph is liked or not may very well depend on the which judge you have, the time of day, or whether the judge had a fight with his wife/husband that morning. Do not take any single judge's comments to personally. If comments were left by the judge, see what you can learn from them. They may or may not be helpful to you.

 

In photography contests (even at the fair level) judges are often looking for something to make the photograph stand out from other photographs. They may see your portrait of Samantha as a wonderful portrait, but just that. They may see nothing about it to make it stand out from other wonderful portraits of beautiful girls.

 

Let's face it -- your portrait should be excellent or you wouldn't have entered in the competition. This should be true of every other person who entered, too.

 

Let me critique this as a portrait. I will suggest a few things that I think will make it a better portrait, but a winner in a contest of any kind is up to the whims of the judges. I like to say this because not only is it true, but it takes a bit of the responsibility of not doing well in a contest away from the photographer -- no one likes to see what they thought was a great photograph not be a winner. Just make sure that you always follow the requirements of the contest exactly.

 

Samantha is a very pretty girl. You have focused very well on her eyes. She has very good catch lights. Even though her left eye is in shadow from her hair the catch light helps give it life. Her make-up is nicely applied. The background is neutral and therefore does not distract from the subject.

 

It looks like her left hand is playing with her hair which would go along with her pensive expression. These work together well for me. The shadows on her face are quite nice and help to create a feeling of depth within the picture. She is looking into the picture and not out of it (there is more room in front of her than behind). Her complexion is very nice.

 

Now I am going to become very critical and look for everything that I can find that could be improved. I will try to tell you why it is wrong and how to make it better. Please do not take this personally.

 

Although she is somewhat separated from the background a backlight would help separate her much better from the dark background. Her skin tone is quite dark. It should be lightened. It really looks a little muddy. Look at her eyes. The whites of her eyes are not white. The specular highlights on her lips are dull. You may have to adjust the contrast and lightness to make your skin tones better. Make sure her face is the brightest area on your portrait. Her left hand is very close in brightness.

 

There is a hair falling across her shadowed left eye. On her right shoulder is a very noticeable string. These should be removed.

 

The posing of her left hand is very feminine and graceful looking, but you do not show the connection to her right arm. We are left to assume that that is indeed her arm and not someone else's arm. I would make it more apparent that she is twirling her hair in her fingers, so that there is no question that her hand is in the photograph for a reason. If not playing with her hair, it really looks odd to be just popping out of the bottom of the picture.

 

Under the right corner (her right) of her mouth there is a dark area and another a little below that -- on her chin. Out from the same corner is a white line that almost looks like a scar. These should be smoothed out.

 

Even though you have quite good left and right balance, it could be better. The compositional "rule" for this suggests that you position the tip of the subject's nose in the vertical center of the photograph. She could be moved a little to her right.

 

Do not pose your subject straight on to the camera. This is not a very feminine pose. Showing your subject’s widest areas (shoulder to shoulder or hip to hip) makes those areas appear wide. Your subject will appear thinner, more feminine and more graceful if turned at an angle to the camera. The lines you see from the side have more apparent motion, interest and grace.

 

Notice the neckline of her top. The viewer's eyes will go to the “V” of the neckline and follow it down and out of the photograph because there is nothing there to stop it. You should try to crop below where the neckline comes together so that the viewer's eyes have a place to stop.

 

Nice shot,

 

Mark

 

P.S. Your name and date are not part of the photograph. They belong on the mat.

 

P.P.S. Someone mentioned that photographic rules are not important and you should not bother with them. You should just go with what you feel looks right to you. The elements of design or composition can influence how we perceive the picture. They have a predictable affect on viewers. The further you move away from the conventional, the further you move away from what is known to work. We get the term “ compositional rule” in photography because it is a design element that has been shown to consistently work. I suggest that you break the rules for a reason -- for an effect you wish to achieve. Good luck to you.

Hi

It's a nice portrait and in my opinion a good picture. For me a tighter crop would work better for what it's worth.

I'm of the opinion that as long as you like the picture and the sitter likes the picture then nothing else matters!.

To get noticed here on Photo.Net you have to be one of the regular contributors - there does seem to be a bit of a clique although I've been a member for years and it doesn't bother me at all. I do get annoyed though at the amount of highly retouched and in some cases 99.9% photoshop generated work that gets showcased. And there's the problem - good quality real photo's just don't get noticed much any more!.

Wow I feel better for letting all that angst out.

Good portrait anyway - well done.

 

To add a few things to what others have said:

 

I agree with most of the praise you have received, and I second it.

 

For some reason, her expression is not doing much for me. Perhaps her eyes are in conflict with her mouth? I'm not sure. I think the skin softening is a LITTLE overdone. Maybe drop the opacity of the softening layer to 85% or so. Also, before you apply softening (and the Nik plugin is NOT my favorite), you need to heal any blemishes, such as the ones on her chin. Otherwise, the softening action will turn them into mushy blobs. Ug-lee! I agree that the whites of her eyes are too dark--they should be closer in value to the catchlights.

 

What did the winning entries look like? This will give you a clue to the judges' preferences. Some judges do not like ANY visible signs of 'photoshopping', even though we did most of the same things in the film days.

 

Don't get me wrong here. I wouldn't refer to any of my own images as 'classic'. Classic style, perhaps.

 

EDIT: To David Trower. I went to the TRPSE and entered 'Portraits' 'Past Month' and 'Aesthetics'. I saw VERY few signs of excessive post-processing. Maybe five per-cent.