Maria in the Studio...

[hawkfeather]

Well, these are my first attempt at Senior Portraits. Please let me know what ya think. I need all the help I can get!!! (More to follow)

[coreypolis]

pretty girl, the skin and face is overexposed and off colored, the background needed to be ironed or steamed to get the wrinkles out

[JMHPhotography]

I was gonna say... overexposed. The second also looks over processed as well. But honestly it wouldn't have looked bad overprocessed if the exposure were correct. Do you have a hand held light meter? It looks like you may have relied on the histogram like many beginners do to gauge your exposure. The problem with that is that if you are trying to make the histogram look more toward the center, using the backgrounds you have going here, you're going to overexpose because they are dark. You want to make sure you keep in mind your entire photograph. Dark backgrounds DO average into the histogram. I would just recommend using a hand held meter when using strobes and get incident meter readings. That will keep your exposures true. Also, you should invest in some sort of calibration target for measuring white balance so that you can avoid color casts like you have here. These seem awful yellowish on my screen. I think that's what Corey is picking up as well. I also concur about the background... but you can also get away with wrinkles if you move the subject away from it and use a large aperature to blur it out.

What I think you did well... you got some nice smiles out of her... she's very pretty and photographs well. I do like your framing on the first. And the hand placement as well. On the second, I'd try to avoid open hands on the cheek side of the key light to avoid casting shadows. Folded under the chin like in the first one is good. Good luck with your future attempts.

[hawkfeather]

Any better?

[Nortelbert]

I agree... overexposed. Plus. as a high school senior, she may not exactly want the "down-blouse" shots to be her official yearbook photo :-)

[LBaldwin]

Not Bad for a first try but there some issues that you need to address first I will take the (potential) legal ones. I think that her attire (cleaveage) is a little too revealing. As people grow older her opinion of the their pictures will change. How she (or her parents) feel about the somewhat revealing images could reflect in a negative manner towards you. If she is underage that could have a effect in others opinion of you in the future when these are shown to others.

1. She is too close to the background and your aperture is too small that renders the background sharp.

2. She has feet growing out of her head, not good.

3. When using the hands as props make sure that they do not press into the skin.

4. The head shot is too overexposed, with light skin back off of the flash by 1/2 to 1/2 stop.

5. Try not to shoot full figured ladies square to the camera.

Les Baldwin

[hawkfeather]

Thanks for all your comments. The girl is 18, but I understand what you mean about the cleavage now. I didn't notice, and her mother was behind me trying to tell her how to pose and this was one of her mother's ideas! Is there a good tutorial on white balance and using strobes with meters. I need to buy a meter. What is a good one that won't cost an arm and a leg??

[convergent]

Get a Westcott exposure/color target (they have a white, grey, and black bar on one side, and white reflector on the other). Meter your strobes one at a time and match your key to your settings on the camera... manual. Then use the exposure target to verify that you are good. With the target, you should get a spike in the middle, and one in the upper and lower quadrants. If they are off center, adjust your exposure to get it right. Once exposure is good, then you can use the same target to take a custom white balance. Then you should be right on the money. The reason you need the meter, and not just the target, is that you need to make sure you are measuring each strobe to get the lighting effect you want. Otherwise your results are going to be totally unrepeatable since there is no way with a histogram to measure the light in different parts of the scene.

[JMHPhotography]

Any better?

The overall tone is better... but it's still overexposed. You need to be looking at the white areas which make hot spots on her skin. Like around her face and her arm in this shot. I applied a thermal mask to show you where the overexposures are, despite the lowering of the overall tone you have areas here that aren't just overexposed, but blown out. Problem with digital is that you have to even MORE dead on with exposure than with even slide film. Once you've blown out the highlights, the detail is gone. This is because the processing on the camera which writes the compressed jpeg file will take the information given it, and use just enough of it to write a jpeg file. The rest of the data is tossed. This is why an 8megapixel jpeg is around 2-3 MB and the same RAW file is close to 8MB. The Raw doesn't throw anything away. But even RAW has limitations. The BEST way to get a good quality photo is to nail the exposure in the camera, and the best way to do that is with a handheld incident flash meter. Forget the histogram. It's nice to use for a reference... but unless you REALLY know how to read what it's showing you, following it will only get you into trouble.

[LBaldwin]

[quote=hawkfeather]. I didn't notice, and her mother was behind me trying to tell her how to pose and this was one of her mother's ideas!

Here is another big issue, STAGE MOMS!! I have nearly shot more than one and not with a camera!! (just kidding ...... mostly ;) )


When I did kids portraits years ago I would have at least one a week that wanted to be the director of our little session. Here is where you need to excercise full control and tell the Mom or grandma to politly go and sit down and be quiet. Only you can look through the viewfinder and only you can see what the image created is going to look like. If they are standing behind you coaching and or yelling like an idiot, send them away. If you don't it is very unlikely that you will get anything on film (or sensor) that is worth a damn.

If the person is 18 send the others OUT of earshot so that you can build a raport with your subject. The subject needs to take direction from you and only you. You need to make sure that you are the captain of all of your shoots.

Les Baldwin

[kster]

forkball, how did you add the thermal mask?