First try at portraits

A friend of mine opened her practice a few months ago and long story short, I realized her photos (those that show up in Google and those on her website), well, sucked. Cell-phone shots, no perspective correction, poor lighting, and one old pixelated portrait. Even though I don't do real-estate or posed portraits I thought even I could do better. So as a favor and a way to get a bit of experience there, I offered to take some shots for her last weekend.

Here are a few of the finished images; I'd be interested in opinions. They're all taken with a single off-camera flash bounced on the walls - the place was fairly small - and a tripod.

Well these are probably a thousand times better than what she had, so I'm sure she is happy with them and it will for sure improve her business image. I don't really have much to say because they look pretty good to me except that maybe the lighting is a bit flat in #1 and if it's possible to try to not cut off the table and equipment in #2 and #3. But you might not have had the option anyway in a small room.

Did you take a headshot?

great job. she really needs to smile a nice natural smile though.

mike_311 wrote in post #18073638
great job. she really needs to smile a nice natural smile though.

... and perhaps sit up a little straighter. She is slumped down on her elbows, raising her shoulders.

Overall, good shots.

I'd pretty aggressively crop #1. Otherwise good work.

Thanks for the feedback. She didn't request a headshot and the files have enough resolution for a 100% crop for website-viewing, so #1 can serve as that. We worked on posing and I guided her as best I could, but a) couldn't get her completely comfortable in front of the camera, and b) missed the raised shoulders. My mistake, I'll know better next time.

@texham: how would you crop it? Cut off above the elbows? Or a bit wider than that?

It's a CC section, yeeey! I can critique!!!

So - they are all bad.

Well, no, not really, just joking. I agree with cropping the first one - the bottom of the image is just a waste. Also the left side. I just would enter the crop pode and slide the bottom left corner inwards. And then all the right side inwards a bit.
The same goes with the second actually - too much mute space, whicj in this case reaping apart the image. The wide angle distortion is debatable, matter of taste, let's leave it at that
And you have waaay too much floor in the third and none of the ceiling. It just make things awkward. Go a bit lower /too late for that, of course/, rearrange things... You could actually make a wide angle effect play even stronger and get up close and personal with nearest corner of the table, but it's too late for that as well, heh. I would bin it.

cheerio

osh_sekta wrote in post #18074474
The wide angle distortion is debatable, matter of taste, let's leave it at that

Generally speaking, I would agree with this comment. However, given the healthcare-practice context of the images, I would avoid perspective distortion at all costs. Distortion can have the unintended consequence of making the viewer uneasy--precisely what you don't want to do with prospective patients. In image #2, if you placed a bone saw on the headrest of that examination table it's game over.

good point.

Maybe you could sell her some prints to hang on the wall? Anything to add some warmth to the environment.

Thanks for the additional feedback, and some great points all around.

We all agreed on the need to hang prints or something, but I got there and there were none, so... Not much I could do about this part.

Thank you for the tip about having some floor and some ceiling and not too much of either. Now that you've said it it seems obvious that in every real estate shot I've seen floor and ceiling were balanced, but it didn't occur to me in the moment.

Now about wide angle: I'm afraid I didn't have a choice. The place is tiny. In every shot you see above, the camera's back was basically to the wall. In shot #1 I could actually not review the images on the LCD screen. I tried straightening lines as best I could but I can't fix perspective; decided to go with it and use the strong diagonals to make the images dynamic. I can't disagree the end result looks a bit extreme.