Downtown e-shoot in beautiful evening light

I'm trying to make an effort to share more, since I haven't really shared in the last year. I can't improve without critique so have at 'er.

Had a great e-shoot with this fun couple! The light was beautiful but still needed some flash to give it that extra zing.

1.

Great shots, 2,3 & 6 are my fav's... what did you use for what if you dont mind me asking?

Really nice job

kingbob734 wrote in post #12521281
Great shots, 2,3 & 6 are my fav's... what did you use for what if you dont mind me asking?

Really nice job

Cheers. thanks!

I used a 40D for the whole shoot.
The lenses are as follows: 10-22, 85 1.8, 85 1.8, 30 1.4, 85 1.8, 50 1.2, 135 2.0, 50 1.2, 50 1.2.

I love these shots. Too often, the woman completely overshadows the man but it's nice to see him as an equal participant. 3 and 4 are my favorites.

Nicely done! Good use of light without appearing to "overlight" the subjects.

I like them all. The last one is my fav. Personally, I think the building in #1 is a bit distracting but a cool building. Maybe a little bokah on it might help.... Just my opinion though. Nice set!!

I can't pick a fav, all are great and nice looking Desi couple, great job!

OMG in #7 he looks a bit like Ross Geller from Friends lol))) (I'm a Friends fan)...

Love all of the photos! Faves are #3, 4 and 7 (of course! hehe)...

I really like 4 and 7.I like the pose in 6, it looks like you captured their true feelings, but the background is a little too busy for me. If the couple are downtwon dwellers, they may really like the entire shot. Good job on the entire set!

cheers guys. Thanks for stopping by. I value your opinions. Thank you for taking the time to drop a line!

i was wondering if you use any soft boxes?

i really like number 2 and 4. In 2 I noticed his head was chopped off a little bit, I wasn't sure if that crop was intentional. And in 4 I really like the detail in the flowers, it helps bring a lot of pop to the picture.

Good stuff. The subjects pop out of the background.

asianstutter wrote in post #12531851
i was wondering if you use any soft boxes?

Yes, for this shoot I used a 16x22 softbox. It's a Chimera Daylite Junior Plus XS with speedlite adapter ring with a 580EX.

arjay702 wrote in post #12533078
i really like number 2 and 4. In 2 I noticed his head was chopped off a little bit, I wasn't sure if that crop was intentional. And in 4 I really like the detail in the flowers, it helps bring a lot of pop to the picture.

Yeah, I cut off his hair in 2. I cut off hair often and on purpose to get the perspective I want. If I stepped back, I'd lose the perspective I wanted. If I cut her arm off, it's more of a visual disturbance IMO because it ruins the flow of the arm line, and the brighter tone makes it more noticeable. Especially when the guy is a lot taller, I tend to use every inch of viewfinder I can, sometimes at the expense of the hair provided that it's on a background of similar tone, just like in 2.

As for 4, I too like the detail of the flowers. That's one of the reasons I prefer to shoot crops than full frame. The extra DOF doesn't smear out everything I want people to see. I don't really like the soupy creamy and totally blurred look of backgrounds. But I also prefer to shoot primes wide open as the bokeh is BEST wide open. On a crop, I can have the bokeh quality I want with the DOF I want. Full frame can often turn everything into a blurred mess, which I don't prefer; we all have our own preferences.

For example, in 5, I used the 85 1.8 on my 40D. If I used my FF cam and my 135L wide open to get the same composition and perspective, you wouldn't be able to see the columns and the compositional lines I wanted... it would have all just become a bunch of blurs and specular highlight circles. Then imo, there would be no reason to put them there because the background becomes much less significant. Shooting with more DOF and identifiable backgrounds is much harder than blurring it out into oblivion. They wanted a DOWNTOWN shoot. There's no point in choosing a location if it's just gonna be blurred out into an unrecognizable soup.

jcu809 wrote in post #12533688
Good stuff. The subjects pop out of the background.

Cheers. A *bit* of blur helps with that. Lighting helps even more. The two together, to me, is very powerful.

Thanks Lloyd for sharing your works and technique details! I am a fan.