Stewart Farm Shoot-8

I took this portrait as part of a family session. We were shooting

inside a dark barn, so I used the natural light (back light) for rim

lighting, and set up my Lumopro 160 with shoot-through umbrella to the

subject's left (camera right). I have just started getting into

portrait work, and plan on trying to get some casual work in this area

( I teach elementary school full-time) for now, and possible a

business when I retire (in 9 years). Please let me know how I am

doing in terms of lighting and framing etc.

Paul

I think it is very good, indeed. It looks unposed. The lighting is good - the highlights in the hair are not blown out and there is good shadow detail. You have a nice catch light in the eyes, which gives life to the image.

You caught a very nice expression on her face.

Very nicely done. This is an image that will sell. You should have no problems starting a portrait business if this is the type of work you do.

An excellent portrait with wonderful lighting.  Good job, but of course it always helps to have a real cutie for a subject ;-)... Mike

Paul,

Very nice shot of a pretty girl with a wonderful smile. I like your backlighting. It gives her a nice halo. The background is nicely out of focus and she is well separated from it.

I think this is a sellable portrait, but I will give you a few ideas that may improve it.

Her eyes are not as sharp as they could be. Make sure you focus carefully on her eyes. Use a tripod whenever possible.

Her skin tone could be a bit lighter. The whites of her eyes look a little gray. Try for nice bold blacks and vibrant whites. This looks just a tad muddy to me.

Your composition is not bad, but you could use a little less headroom and she should have more room in front of her than behind. This allows her to be facing into the picture, not out of it. You want to compositionally balance the left and right sides of the photograph. The compositional "rule" for this suggests that you position the tip of the subject's nose in the vertical center of the photograph. By positioning the tip of her nose in the vertical center of the photograph you not only have her facing into the picture, but you have good left and right compositional balance. This little rule almost always works well. At least it gives you a good starting point from which to subtly adjust your composition to make it visually balanced.

You could easily crop out the bottom right corner to get rid of the little line in the corner. It's not a big deal, but it would make your entire background uniform.

It probably doesn't really matter too much for an informal portrait of a relatively young girl, but you want to careful of clothes with bold patterns. They tend to draw the viewer's attention away from the subject. The same is true of clothes with pictures or writing on them and, of course, bright colors in color portraits.

You have two catchlights in each eye. One catchlight per eye is preferred. You get those tiny pointy little catchlights in the middle of her pupils from your camera's built-in flash. It would be best to get rid of those and keep the nice catchlights on her irises. They look better on the irises than on the pupils.

You don't want unruly hairs across her face. It is easier to have her brush them out of the way before you shoot than to remove them later.

I've changed the composition a bit and lightened the image. Rather than crop that closely on the left I would have given her more room in front of her when I shot the image, but this works. I also removed the funky catchlights in the center of her pupils.

Nice shot,

Mark

Hello Paul,

I like it just the way it is. I like the posture of the girl, the soft light and the sensation of volume given by the gray tones.  Quite rare here on PN where everybody seems to bet on maximum sharpness and contrast.

What do you do for transition to B&W? While making the edits in Lightroom or PS,  I choose to have deep black tones here and there. I browsed your entire portfolio, quite rich in B&W photos - all these are excellent photos without having the choice for deep black at all.  Is it a matter of choice? Do you avoid post processing?

Promise to come back to see more!