What makes a good portrait? (is this one?)

I love photography, I love the geekiness of it but I also love that fact that you can capture moments of beauty.

Now we've got that schmultz out of the way I want to get better at it. One day I would like to be able to charge people for taking pictures of them and their children/babies etc.

I only want to do this when I am good enough, I see a few people in my area who are offering photographic services and I don't think they are very good - I don't want to be one of those people and will only do it when I feel I am good enough, whether that takes 6 months of 6 years is irrelevant.

I've been on a few courses and read a lot, I've been interested in photography for a long time and feel I understand DoF, shutter speed etc. pretty well. I need to go deeper though and take some 'great' photos. My wife loves me and tells me I am good, a few colleagues have seen some of my shots and say they are good - but then they would right? My children are both beautiful so any picture I take of them tends to be ok/good, but I want other people to look at them and think they are good photos, rather than beautiful children (ok, as well as )

Take this picture for example.

IMAGE LINK: http://www.flickr.com/​photos/thesancho/97572​96303/

That bad?

Your question seems more like pleading your case rather than being ready to hear critique but here goes. Its a competent enough photo. Nothing here thats terrible. But there are a few things that could be a bit better. Starting with the background. Its not uniformly the same color so it appears a bit happenstance. If you want to isolate your subject you dont want the background to compete. I know you want to separate subject from technique but the intense glare of the subject still affects the viewers impression of the portrait and making your subject appear relaxed and comfortable is part of the portrait photographers job. You may counter with portraits that are more intense in nature, but those are generally not tightly framed head shots.

gonzogolf wrote in post #16312208
Your question seems more like pleading your case rather than being ready to hear critique but here goes. Its a competent enough photo. Nothing here thats terrible. But there are a few things that could be a bit better. Starting with the background. Its not uniformly the same color so it appears a bit happenstance. If you want to isolate your subject you dont want the background to compete. I know you want to separate subject from technique but the intense glare of the subject still affects the viewers impression of the portrait and making your subject appear relaxed and comfortable is part of the portrait photographers job. You may counter with portraits that are more intense in nature, but those are generally not tightly framed head shots.

Sorry if it came across like that, it wasn't supposed to. More trying to put across what I thought about/knew when taking the shot. I'm always happy for critique otherwise I'll never learn.

I get your point about his 'look', he was a fellow student on a course and didn't who didn'trreally want to model, just was his turn.

Thanks though, will try to bear in mind backgrounds. Outdoor portraits will obviously not have a 'uniform' background, or does what you say only apply to studio stuff?

sancho1983 wrote in post #16312388
Sorry if it came across like that, it wasn't supposed to. More trying to put across what I thought about/knew when taking the shot. I'm always happy for critique otherwise I'll never learn.

I get your point about his 'look', he was a fellow student on a course and didn't who didn'trreally want to model, just was his turn.

Thanks though, will try to bear in mind backgrounds. Outdoor portraits will obviously not have a 'uniform' background, or does what you say only apply to studio stuff?

No, outdoor shots wont look uniform, but they arent meant to be. In this shot you have what appears to be a white backdrop that isnt white nor consistently lit across the shot.

gonzogolf wrote in post #16312396
No, outdoor shots wont look uniform, but they arent meant to be. In this shot you have what appears to be a white backdrop that isnt white nor consistently lit across the shot.

Thanks. I'm going to test out some techniques with my children over the weekend. Will be sure to light the background properly.

Incidentally the background on that shot was just the wall in the room we were using, he didn'thhave backgrounds, which was annoying.

sancho1983 wrote in post #16312432
Thanks. I'm going to test out some techniques with my children over the weekend. Will be sure to light the background properly.

Incidentally the background on that shot was just the wall in the room we were using, he didn'thhave backgrounds, which was annoying.

The more you tell me the more that this appears to be a well exposed snapshot more than a studio portrait.

Maybe. We used studio lights and umbrellas in a room which was hired for a 'home studio' course.

The opurpose of the course was to teach us how to use lights, how to set our cameras properly and how to arrange lights in different ways to get different effects.

I learnt quite a bit if technical knowledge (hence I suppose it was exposed ok) but the purpose of this thread was to understand a bit more about how to go that bit further and take better portraits (not just from an understanding how to use the camera perspective)

He looks a bit wrong and the background is poor - the thread worked.

I wasn't necessarily just looking for critique on this shot (although like I said, it's more than welcome) I just offered the shot as an example of my understanding of what I already know. Iyswim.

Couple of thoughts
light from left is a bit too harsh.
You may want to read up on portrait lighting (formal)
What I see on this shot is contradictory shadows (shadows thrown by both lights)
it is usually more comfortable to have a main light a bit above and to the right of the subject, then additional light(s) to soften shadows.

Happy Shooting!

picture seem very flat. It has no dynamic range, emotion or anything that catch the viewer's eyes.

*ICE* wrote in post #16313452
picture seem very flat. It has no dynamic range, emotion or anything that catch the viewer's eyes.

Thanks - how would I improve the dynamic range?

@johndoorley I will do that. One key light and another fill right?

You're on the right track with your lighting. You;ve got the rim light coming in from camera left and giving his face a nicce edge.

But honestly, given the type of face that this guy has, a tougher monochrome look would have suited him better, with a harsher light and more contrast.

I had a play around...

IMAGE LINK: http://s24.photobucket​.com …5a_o_zps8f04e53​0.jpg.html

I had also edited this one

IMAGE LINK: http://www.flickr.com/​photos/thesancho/97572​23615/

The edge light from the left is lighting the subjects nose, I would feather it a bit back.

There are some strange shadows around the left side of the mouth making the portrait look crosslit (again the edge light is bleeding to much in to the face).

Nonnit wrote in post #16313533
The edge light from the left is lighting the subjects nose, I would feather it a bit back.

There are some strange shadows around the left side of the mouth making the portrait look crosslit (again the edge light is bleeding to much in to the face).

Yeah, I noticed this as well.

A good starting point to avoid this is to make sure that the subject is directly between the two lights. In other words, if you are looking from the key light, you shouldn't be able to see the rim light, and vice versa. This helps to ensure that there aren't any parts being lit by the two lights, because lit by two lights means casting two shadows, which can look odd. As always, this can be broken if you know what you are doing, but it's a good rule of thumb to start out with.