dave paduch

Is there too much breast as Mark suggests? Not enough? Are the

colouring and exposure to your liking? What would you do different.

As Mark has all ready noted, in this type of photo there's a fine

line behind too much and not enough, and that's a pretty subjective

line. I feel the photo works as is, while using the cropping

suggestion of Marks' creates a completely different photo, one I

also like by the way, it's just not what I was aiming for.

 

Comments?

I would have given you a 7 for Athstetics but, what could have been a perfect photo is mared by the 2 dead(or bad at any rate) pixles. The DiMAGE is notorious for this. (Ok, so's my E-10, I've been lucky so far and have only 1 but it's something I look for in every photo I take with the thing.) One is right in the center top to bottom and sitting pretty much a third of the way in from the right. Because it's pretty much right in the center of the black I can't help but notice it. The other one is slightly higher and closer to the lips, about where the corner of her mouth would be. I know this is picky, but the shot is amazing and to see something missed that can be cleaned up in even the most basic of paint programs is unfortunate.

 

Otherwise great work. I might have put a little more light onto the right side of the picture. Not enough to show any detail, just enough to give us some sense of shape.

 

The lighting is just my opinion, the pixels on the other hand, clean them up! YIKES! I just looked at the full size version. It's 3 bad pixels and I think some ghosting of the worst one that's adding in 3 additional small dots. Keep an eye out for this in your work. It's going to be a pain to clean up but once you know where they are, it's not too bad.

 

DOH! My partner just pointed out that the pixel problem might in fact be specular highlights off the lips on that side. Now that I look again, I think he's probably right. But, if that's the case then my mention of more detail in the right side still stands. Or less detail and remove the faint highlights. I would go for bumping the exposure up just a little on the right though.

 

Your milage may vary.

(edited Jan 15 11:30 mst to admit mistake. heh.)

Ya, I find with the E-10 that you get a monsterously huge depth of field in general and I was shooting at a fairly wide angle here which just increases that. So ya, 3.2 it was.

 

As for the hair and feet, that was actually a styling choice. With the feet is was part of who they were. Crystal, on the left, was the quieter more contained of the two, and Connie is far more aggressive and open. They sort of naturally put their feet that way and I only moved them a bit to help with the flow of the composition. The hair is loose 'cause I didn't want the shot to have a formal look. Straightning out the ends would have taken away from the casuallness too much and with the expressions they have, I don't think it would look as relaxed as I wanted it.

 

Other's milage may vary of course. Heh. Thanks for the comment.

Looking for useful critiques.

 

Thanks in advance.

I think the depth of field is just the slightest bit too shallow. Everything else is great, the colour is amazing, I love the composition, but, I would have liked to see the first item on the left tray in focus from front to back. Having the other three pieces go out of focus is fine, but to me, if you're going to sell this image, it needs to have it's central subject totally sharp.

 

At least, that's what I would like to see. Your milage may very.

 

Great shot non the less and something I'd be happy to have in my collection.

I added my first comment about lighting without seeing this one, and here you did use a butterfly setup. You even have a third light, but I would position it a little more behind the subject. Having that extra dot in the side of the eye is kind of distracting.

 

I like the pose and unlike Ort I have to dissagree. I do colour to b&w converstions all the time. And they do work. But, you have to do more than just convert photos to greyscale or pulling individual channels. Ort is right in that there seems to be a loss of contrast in this picture though. Without the original photo I'm not even going to start to comment on how I whould convert this image.

 

That being said, I think this is one of the best photos in your collection. I really do like it.

The jpeg compression has softened and dulled(?) the image a bit,

otherwise this is what the original tif looks like. As I mentioned

in the photo description this kind of exagerated Photoshoping is

starting to show up in a lot of fashion photos, so I thought I'd

jump in and give it a shot myself.

 

All comments are welcome.

All comments welcome.

The more I look at it, the more I think it's *too* soft. Now this could be a result of the blacks being a little thin. I had to lighten them up a bit after softening the picture, unfortunalty I may have gone too far. Thanks Joey for pointing that out.

Michelle, There are a couple of other shots I did with this, uhmm, outfit, I'll get them uploaded for comparison. Ya, the location is kind of odd, but we were looking for a fairly secluded place just outside of town, a gravel road was where we ended up. We (my partner and I,) didn't want to be draging her and her boyfriend halfway across the province for this first shoot. We'll likely go to a much better location for the next shoot. We just wanted to stay close to her home as more of a comfort/convinence thing for her on our first shoot together.

Heh, I don't know that she was all that resentful at the time. Hungry, yes, it was near the end of a 3.5 hour shoot, but she was in a good mood non the less. The look on her face is her natural, relaxed expression. We did get some good smiles out of her, but that's a skill I still haven't prefected yet. The 'keep them laughing' patter. I tend to get a little wrapped up in catching or setting the pose I like and then there's trying to catch all the stuff that I don't like when I look through the lens. I sometimes forget the model needs both contact and reasurance. Hell I sometimes forget that the model is even there. I get so wrapped up in the image I'm trying to make. (Yes, even when working with attractive, barely dressed models.)

 

Thanks for the critiques.

Just looking for suggestions on what could make this a better

picture.

I was really struck by this shot. Great perspective, I really like the point of view, and how the distortion from the wide angle lens enhances the architecture.

 

Great shot.

 

Dave

I too really like this shot. I do agree with a couple of other comments about the lower part of her body. It's a shame that it's cut off like this. On the other hand, unless she was sitting on black cloth, and her feet are posed just right (something that I find really hard to do. Feet, just damn unco-operative!) I know from experiance that how she's sitting can create some ugly lines and things where model touches ground.

 

I like the placement in the picture. All that black though is a little distracting. Not that I know what to put in there. If this was an ad then copy would go in that space, be even then, a slight graduation of colour, maybe a very very dark red to black 'glow' in the corner or something? I don't know, really, it's something I'm still struggling with myself. My first response is always to leave large blocks of white or black, but the more I do, the more I think that there should be something there. Even if it's so subtle as to be more or less invisible. I don't know, try using the cloud filter but fade it out to create a really subtle texture in the black. (Shoot, I can't remember what the filter is really called, I'll look it up and edit this once I have the info,)

 

Ok, now I'm rambling.

 

Again though, great work.

 

 

Great picture Lucas.

I too have always been a fan of the film noir(sp?) look. You've done a great job in capturing the feeling. Then going with the 'street kid' model adds a nice original touch.

 

This kind of lighting is something I've always wanted to try, and with a portfolio shoot coming up tomorrow morning, I think I'll give it a try. Thanks for the insperation.

 

 

I don't know if it's really fine art, what do you think? I know it's

a little soft, I think that's a result of the jpg compression.

Hi Lucas.

First off, thanks for the comment on my own work.

 

I love this shot. It's simple, clean, shows off the product amazingly well, but at the same time has a nice, dare I say, 'artsie' feel to it. Great stuff. I can imagine that a three foot by four foot print would look great in a large loft apartment. (Sorry, been spending some time figuring out how to decorate the place I'm in.) I'm a fan of great product shots. There aren't many, but this one ranks right up there.

 

Now, here's a way you might have been able to save some film.

 

If I were to do this shot I would have avoided the hassle of the double exposer and used a 'light painting' technique.

 

The physical setup stays the same, except you're going to have to shoot in a totally blacked out studio. Or in this case, apartment. Why? You're going to use the bulb setting instead of the multiple.

 

Using a flash meter, set your camera to properly expose for the flash.

 

Next, take a meter reading with just the lightbox and figure out how long the exposure needs to be with your camera properly set for the flash.

 

Now, make sure you can both set off the flash and turn on and off the light box without having to stumble around a dark room, or if you have to move around, practice a few times so you're not knocking your camera over or walking into your product setup.

 

Set your camera to bulb. Kill the lights in the studio (remember to do your metering in the darkened studio as well). Open the shutter, and lock it open. You'll want to use a cable release for this. Now, you can either turn on the light box and count, or use an enlarger timer, or what ever to control the time. Once it goes out, fire off your flash.

 

Release the cable and you should have your two part exposer in one shot. It's still a bit of dicking around, but, there's a lot less that can go wrong. If you're using a polaroid back, you'll also know right away if you've got the two wildly different exposures right. And it's easy to reproduce. With something like this you can also experiment a bit with filling the underside of the lemon a bit (if you so choose, I happen to like the shadow myself but as an example say,) by taking a flashlight or penlight with a cone of foil or paper to focus the light, and 'painting' the underside of the lemon with a mini spot light. Again you'll have to take a meter reading of the mini spot to figure out how long to paint the object with the light, but a little practice and you could do away with the flash entirely, open the lens, use just the mini spot light to light something like the lemon with a much shorter exposure time over all.

 

Just another way to light the same scene.

 

Keep them coming.

 

Dave Paduch

First off, thanks for the comments. It's all helpfull.

 

 

Peter;

It is a little lighter than I was intending, but not as much as you might think. I've been playing around with this sort of high key look. Probably too much Patrick Nagel influence. That being said, the picture is admitedly a little too, I don't know, soft(?) I guess. Part of that comes from the Photoshop process. Something I've started to notice in some of my work.

 

Lucas;

You're the guy with the amazing bottle and lemon shot. I'll stop by and throw my 2 cents worth for sure. I might have a suggestion on how to do the same shot without having to do the double exposer.

Back to your comments. Bonnie's great, and can connect with the camera in an instant. Makes my job a lot easier. In retrospect you're right about her expression, either a slight hint of a smile, or a slight frown, and I mean slight in either case would have made a world of difference.

They wayward hair is more or less my fault. I've all ready removed a couple that were falling right across her face, but I really should have had the stylist just comb/brush her hair. It was getting late in the day and she was the fourth person I was working on and I just got lazy. No excuse I know, it's just what happened. As for the mascara, this was the first time I had worked with this stylist and I figured that it was just something her and Bonnie had decided on. I'll have to ask her about that, 'cause I noticed that in some of the other shots I did Bonnie almost looks like a cartoon 'cause of the size of her eyes and the odd looking lashes. Now I didn't really pick up on that until I saw the pictures again a few days later. *shrug* Live and learn I guess. I've noticed that I'm still not paying enough attention to the details. Something I'm going to have to get a little more anal about.

 

To both Lucas and John;

I was going for the softest most diffused shadows that I could get. Then the additional Photoshoping (I'll detail the steps at the end) softens the picture even more. It was a look. I'm not going to give up on it, but it does seem to need some refinement.

 

John, the colouring is a combination of her slightly coloured, all ready redish hair, a very pale complection and again, a result of the Photoshop work I did.

 

Pete;

No scan, this is straight from the camera into Photoshop. I'll explain.

 

The 'Soft Focus' effect is done in a a few simple steps.

 

1. Make sure that you're starting with a good sharp, well exposed, low contrast image. Do your basic touchups, removing blemishes, stray hairs (heh), lint, etc.

2. Make a copy of that layer.

3. Change the copy from 'normal' to 'soft light' At this point it's going to get kind of contrasty and there might be a slight colour shift.

4. Apply a Gaussian blur to the copied layer. About 20% for a closeup like this. Again, this is going to add to the contrast of the image.

5. Adjust the opaqueness of the copied layer to set exactly how much 'softness' you want.

6. This is a step I think I might have missed and would explain why the eyes seem just the slightest bit soft. Add a mask to the copied layer and with either an airbrush or regular brush (your preference) that's the same size as the puple, place a black spot on each eye. I would suggest that you set your brush to about 20% opacity and just 'paint' over each eye until the original layer from below sharpens up the eyes.

7. Add a levels layer and well, mess around with this until you get back the light and contrast that you want. There are no hard and fast rules here, it's a matter of taste really. If you have a historgram that's way to the left and showing that you have almost all black at this point, I can tell you that you're not going to get a good image. No matter how much you play with it, you're going to have large blotches of flat colour that just aren't going to look good. So, be prepared.

 

Flatten and save that puppy out.

 

At least that's what I did to get this picture looking like this. I should upload a small copy of the original for comparison. It might make a bit more sense then.

 

Again thanks for the comments, John G. if you want to play with the picture, go right ahead, let me see what you come up with.

 

Later.

I'm kind of hooked on these close portraits, but I'm always looking

for new ideas. What could/should I have done to improve this?

 

Thanks in advance.

Heh, welcome to the wonderful world of fashion. Actually, if you check out current fashions in the larger centers, you'll see that, in the eyes especially, this makeup is fairly tame.

Remember, these photos are done for women trying to get work as models. Some of the makeup's are going to be light, others a lot more, uhm, vibrant.

It's all about fantasy, it's the nature of the business.

Heh, it's like the little invader just realised his intended study subject has left home without him.

Fun picture.

I have to agree with Mary.

 

Time to go searching through that junk pile to see if I can find *my* next masterpiece.

 

Good work, the whole folder is amazing.

Thanks for sharing.

Dave

Thank you all.

 

While I haven't been in the fashion/commercial photography thing very long, I do have an extensive history in graphic arts. I never pursued it profesionally, but I've never been too far away from a paintbrush, airbrush, pencil, computer graphics package or, camera. I think that a lot of specialist artists, be it photographers, web designers, makeup artists, what have you, don't understand the value of just learning how to draw.

There are lots of photography courses out there, but few that take the time to teach new students the basics of composition. Something that's a must if you want to create good images. Now I'm no expert, and to be honest, it's not been until very recently that I've been confident enough about my work to display it, but the technical aspect of photography can be learned in a couple of days, it's the application of that knowledge to the technical aspects of basic composition that's the trick.

 

I'm more or less self taught, but I have taken a few courses with a couple of great teachers that helped put the bits and pieces I knew together.

 

Thanks again all for the great feedback.

Humm.....I think you might be right. I just reran it through PS and warmed it up a touch. I think the colours in the original are truer, but even just a touch less blue helps the image.

 

Thanks for the observation.

This was taken for this young woman's first portfolio shoot.

Now, I like this picture, enough that this will probably go into my

portfolio as well, but what I want to know is, is it a 10 out of 10?

If not why?

Yup it's shot digital, but with no intention of enlarging over 11x14

I find that the image is sharp and clean in print.

I'm more interested in improvements in lighting, pose, makeup, etc.

What are the little things that could make this a better picture?

I agree that it could have used a small amount of light on the top right of her head. It's one of those things on the 'to purchase next' list. That would also have added just enough light to her right shoulder to bring it out from the background without killing the mood.

As for the hair, I'm undecided. I kind of like it where it is, but at the same time recongnize that it does kind of dampen the impact of the catch light.

Given that it was an impromptu 5 min. while I was waiting for a client, I'm pretty happy with what I came up with.

Thanks for the comments.

I like the subject, but, and this might just be me, I think I would have cropped it in from the left just enough to remove the dive platform. I know that would leave two disembodied hands, but I think the flow of the picture would be much better.