Portrait Critique

Heylo~!

I'd appreciate critiques on the following portrait:

This was show with one speedlight in an umbrella, balancing against the sun. There's some post processing work involved using Lightroom and Portrait Professional 12, (PP12 only used to work the skin a touch, not to edit lighting or reshape his face)

My personal feelings: I don't like that his tie is loose. I had him loosen it for a previous pose, and it worked very well, as he had the sports coat off and over his shoulder and it looked much more casual. I would have preferred this one to be a more professional shot, but...!

No expert, but I think this is pretty good!

Brightness is max on hands and fades towards the top of the head, I think a gentle bit of PP could fix easily.

I don't like the tower growing out of his shoulder. The background does look cool, I just think the angle needs to be a bt different.

Clone out the bright spot next to his upper (his) left arm.

The sharp shadow on his neck - I guess this is the sun and you couldn't avoid it?

1. Thanks for pointing out the hands are too bright, I'll try a grad ND filter on it to see what I can do in Lightroom...

2. I'm sort of wishing I'd gotten the full arch in the shot now that you mention this. It's a nice framing effect. Cloning it out at this point would be very tricky and would look weird to everyone local who knows what it is. I guess I didn't see it because I know what the full structure is! Oops. Maybe dropping the DoF even more would have helped too, but IIRC I was at sync speed anyway.

3. Yup, that's distracting.

4. Yes, sun is camera right and over his shoulder. Speedlight is camera left providing fill, pretty close but pushing it any more lost me any ratio I had and still didn't quite kill this. Maybe a bounce card low camera left would have helped too.

Thanks!

JacobAllison wrote in post #17310661
1. Thanks for pointing out the hands are too bright, I'll try a grad ND filter on it to see what I can do in Lightroom...

The adjustment brush with a little negative Highlights and negative Exposure will probably be better than the gradient tool - that way you don't have to worry about the pants, grass, and cuffs.

good lookin' guy and razor sharp photo, but I have to agree that "shoulder growth" was immediately distracting...but that location looks to be a beautiful spot if the framing was different

I agree with you Jacob in that he looks waayyyy to serious to have a loose tie. a smile or laugh would have been great though...potentially combined with a "one hand slapping his leg" kind of pose. the look on his face would have been better suited if his tie were tight and he had both legs on the ground, leaning slightly forward, and looking directly at the lens. he looks like can can totally pull off a "super serious I'm looking right at, no THROUGH you!" pose

Thanks for the critiques, =)

I find it really funny that while I'm normally looking for weird head or body growths, I didn't even register this one as such! That'll teach me not to assume things about my photos.

Nathan -- I used ad adjustment layer with a slight negative exposure and slight contrast boost with a alpha mask using a circular gradient when I was playing with it last night. I figured it would let me also draw some attention away from his knee without messing up the color too much.