portraits & people Delphine

I'm back from Africa. I have 2312 photos from two weeks. I actually could easily have taken more, but I was actually working as a volunteer, so I didn't have a lot of time to use my camera. :-) Anyway, I thought I'd start with some photos of the women I worked with. The organization is called Amani ya Juu, which in Swahili means, "Higher Peace". It is a reconciliation project, teaching marginalized women to sew so that they can have a trade and thus support themselves and their families.

Delphine is a sweet young lady in her early 20's. She has already experienced a lot of loss in her life. She's smart and motivated. I worked with her on computer and typing skills.

Photographically, do you think that the hot spots on her skin are too hot? Exposure of her skin? DOF? Any other thoughts?

I'm anxious to hear from you..... :-)

Lou Ann - I've been watching your portraits to see what you are doing. You know I'm no portrait photographer, so I was curious to see what comments would be left. I have to tell you this is no 3/3. What you could do with it, perhaps, is to crop to a square and leave out most of the red shirt. A lovely lady. You might try some different temperatures on your white balance to see how that affects skin tone.

Richard

Hi Lou Ann. I would concur about cropping. It will bring attention to her face, because as it is, the red sweater is very bright and draws attention away from Delphine.

As for photographing people, I've found the best way to do so indoors is to use off-camera lighting. This can be achieved with a flashgun, bouncing the light off a ceiling or wall. It makes such a big difference.

In your case here, I am surprised you needed flash at such wide aperture. Maybe practice handholding, because you could probably have got away with 1/45, no flash.

Aside from flash, a simple reflector would do nicely. Just have someone hold it to bounce light back into her face from the window in the background

I'm sure you know this, but for dark-skinned people, your in-camera metering is thrown off, so in the absence of an incident light meter, I'd take the metering from a mid-tone like her sweater perhaps. Or else, bracket your exposures...

I hope this helps a little :)

Best regards from Kenya,

Mark