First Portrait

This is my first try at portrait photography,I applied a small levels adjustment,small touch of saturation and a glamour shot filter.What do you guys think,any c&c would be great.

thanks...Andy

HOSTED PHOTO
please log in to view hosted photos in full size.

Andy,

The white balance and exposure look good. There are several things that I find not so good about this image. She is giving us the finger! She is posed so her torso is flat to the camera making her look heavy. There was something blocking the light or the lens at the lower left corner. Her hands are brighter than her face. Why is she looking off?

Benji

+1 on the lower left. The bottom half of the photo seems a bit blurry too.

I like pose...but the image looks OOF.

Color looks good and light is OK but there is something about the face - it looks blurry. It actually causes my eyes to search for a focus point. Strange.

There also appears to be a tool line between the nose and top lip.

Titus213 wrote in post #6626415
Color looks good and light is OK but there is something about the face - it looks blurry. It actually causes my eyes to search for a focus point. Strange.

There also appears to be a tool line between the nose and top lip.

I agree...... nice color and lighting though.

Picture seems soft. Might be my monitor though. For her facial shape, I would light her left side and create some shadow on her right side. Would be nice if the hair at the bottom could be fixed. Nice color.

Looks soft on my monitor too.

I agree. did you notice the hair band on her wrist.

Now I'm worried. I think her skin looks too yellow-green. Her lips don't have a very saturated red either. Whites look a little dark. I hope my monitor hasn't tanked.
Ok sanity check: Her eyes are a light brown or hazel, purple nail polish, almost light-orange or salmon color lipstick?
EDIT: I d/l and opened image in CS3. It is in Adobe RGB colorspace and looked better in CS3 Raw processor; but I turned down vibrance -30 and it looked much better. I'm using Firefox and the Web image does look off color.

Ok...just my two cents worth here. Aside from what the others have already said in regards to the shadows and the lighting, there's a couple of other things I'm seeing.

First, I see that you used a "glamor shot filter" and I'm assuming that this means a soft-focus filter. For a print this might look ok, but here on the ol' pc it just looks out of focus. This is kind of a subjective thing in that I've seen "glamor shots" that look really good this way as prints...and in that regards, things don't always translate well between prints and the monitor.

Also, while I'll say that to me the colors look more or less correct, I think I'd check the levels as over-all the image seems too dark.

The pose itself doesn't really bother me, but I think I'd crop/trim just a little off the top of this image. It looks like this is in a 4x6 format, I think I'd go with an 8x10 and maybe trim a bit off the bottom too....might make that lower left hand shadow on her arm a little less obvious.

Another thing I'm seeing that should have been fixed during the shoot is that there's some distracting highlights on her face...specifically forehead, cheeks and chin. Try to watch for these as you're shooting and have the model apply some powder if necessary.

All and all I've seen worse...probably shot worse myself when I was just learning portraits, but I would suggest paying more attention to the details, both during the shoot as well as during pp next time you try this.

Again just my $.02,
Jim

thanks for all the comments folks,its great to see so many taking time to share there views,i will take all on board,try one or two things and see how it goes,agin thanks alot.

Andy

a little orange, if nothing else get the lead eye sharp. good start

I don't know what a glamour shot filter is, but I think it is the contributing factor to your problem . I believe it would be beneficial to remove the filter from all except the complexion (cheeks, chin, nose, and forhead).

I like the lighting, good exposure. I agree with Walczak in cropping the top of the photo. The fact that her hands are lighter than her face (probably from makeup) is distracting, and takes the attention away from her face. I would've liked to have seen her looking at the camera without the hands in the shot.