various portraits a page header

was doing this for a web page layout and then decided to add it to my

PN album...

You may have a very good reason for choosing these tonal values.  My preference is to bring beauty out of the shadows.  For me, anything that is beautiful belongs in the light and anything ugly belongs in the shadows.  You have a wonderfully soft light quality on her face but it is hard for me to see it because it is dark.  There is no right or wrong here, only preferences, and whether or not the image achieved the purpose for which it was made.  I hope this is helpful.  Good luck.

Hello Frederick

Very well done. My only suggestion might be to bump up the brightness and contrast in the hair to get some more detail revealed but it's personal taste and depends on the look you're going for.

Regards

Greg

I personally find that darkness can add depth and mystery.  Dark tones and gradients are what I like to pull my image forward from...

Another aspect I also find interesting is that many people today, want a photographic image to demonstrate more light and visual information than existed in the actual real life setting.

My portraiture tends to consistently be on the dark side.  I appreciate the time you took to share your viewpoint, that's why we all come here.

This was taken on a dark rainy day, by window light alone...  that is what I wanted to capture.

 I too have noticed how easy it is for the darks to predominate in digital photography.  Basically there is a five stop range of brightness - sort of like working with old Kodachrome film.  It required setting the exposure for the highlights - and let the shadows fall where they would.  One of my postsed pictures is taken in the mountains of Colorado and someone commented that he would like to see the dark forest less dark.  Impossible on Kodachrome film of the time it was taken.

 I finally discovered the digital technique called "expose to the right" and adopted it. (you can find it on the web). I find that it gives me much more control over tonality by preventing accidental underexposure.  In simple language it says, since there is only a five stop range and the brightest stop uses one-half the pixels available and each successively darker stop uses one-half of the remaining pixels, it is important to get the exposure exactly right at the highlight or right end of the range, so as to leave enough pixels at the darkest f/stop portion of the picture.  Instead of just looking at the image I have taken, I set the camera to show both image and exposure graph.  If the right side is not nearly exactly at the right end, I adjust the exposure and take another picture.  That way all of the pixels are being used to express the image.

 In film the characteristic curve was a curved line and gentle shadow handling was close to automatic.  In digital it is a straight line and frequently post processing adjustments can improve the shadows.  That is after the  "expose to the right" procedures during picture taking.

My regards,

Jerry Matchett