First studio portrait C&C

This is my first attempt at studio lighting. (I am using speedlights) How's the lighting, pose, and post processing?

Not bad for a first time! The first thing I notice is that the lights are too hot on her face. She is over exposed on her foreheard and right cheek. The processing looks pretty good in that I cant tell what youve done, but it looks nice. Her eyes arent overcooked and her skin still has texture. Another thing I noticed while looking at her eyes is that the pupils are fairly large. Leaving a light on in the room or shining a low powered flashlight onto her will close them down without affecting the final image. Since you are killing all the ambient light by shooting at F4, ISO100 and 1/160th a second.

Often times, youll read that women should always be short lit. Here, you have her broad lit, meaning the side of her face showing the most skin is brighter than the side that it "shorter". These are the things that stood out most to me.

Take a look at this awesome link. Im sure youll find it useful. http://photocamel.com …les-good-portraiture.html

Great advice Jak! One more thing to add is to attempt to get that catch-light higher up in her eyes.

Wiz, I think the low catch light is from a fill light. It has overpowered the main and caused the side that should be in shadow, to be brighter. I see another higher and more properly positioned catch light but its smaller and faint.

What modifiers are you using rlineberg?

Bounce white for key, shoot through for fill, bare bulb for hair light. I did not realize the fill was overpowering the key until later.

rlineberg wrote in post #13982745
Bounce white for key, shoot through for fill, bare bulb for hair light. I did not realize the fill was overpowering the key until later.

Cool! Well, here is what I do, maybe it will help you and it will certainly stop you from ever overpowering your main with the fill. I set the fill first. Its the very first one I set so that I know what the darkest parts of my image will be. When I have that, its empowering because now I can view all the changes and additions in light in relation to there being this base exposure of just the fill.

I agree with Jak...

Jak, Great explanation. To the OP, nice capture

As far as posing I would bring her chin down and her forehead forwards, this is not the most flattering pose for a woman. Second prior comments regarding the lighting.

Thanks for the C&C, it really helps. Here is another one. Better I think, but need to work on some short lighting portraits still.