HDR - Evening Portraits C&C Please

So I've been trying to work on my evening portrait skills. I was basically using off camera flash, and then like 1 second shutter times on a tripod to get the ambient I was after, etc...

So last night i was shooting on this bridge and thought that I should take a at like 1/4 second, to get just tad of ambient. And then I removed them from the shot and shot a set of 7 images for an hdr.

I then loaded up the hdr as the background and used a layer/mask to lay them back on top. Since that railing was there it was a very easy mask, have some cleanup on the arm I noticed this morning.

Here's how my shots were looking without the hdr background.

http://www.flickr.com/​photos/byjeremiah/4540​944602/

And then here's the one from last night. Does it work, not work, suck, whatever I'd like to hear what some other people think. Really trying to improve my skills this year.

each component by itself looks good... but I'm unsure of how they work together... it kind of looks like the girls are standing in front of a poster of a city...

The skin softening on the girls is so strong that it lends to the sense that this is some sort of composite. In looking at your flicker shots it seems to me you could have gotten much closer to your finished result by either slowing your shutter speed and allowing a little more background ambient in, or raising the iso to get the same result.

Definitely better with the HDR background. The skin softening is way too intense though.

Yeah, this one was pretty unusable due to the noise. This next time I'm going to shoot the shot of the people at iso 100 and not worry about getting much ambient at all. Then I'll do the hdr after they're out of the shot again. Shot of them at iso 400 was so noisy, even after heavey noise reduction, the skin smoothing was an attempt to get rid of that.

Thanks for the comments. Going back out on Monday with these two as well to another location but the same kind of thing.

It is kind of funny, I've noticed that any non-photog people I've showed this too like the hdr background one better. But most photog friends that have commented on it have said it looks like I shot them indoors or something and then just pasted them onto this photo. If my photoshop skills were good enough I would probably just have done that, would have saved the mile long hike out to the middle of that bridge.

Nice thing is that the girls loved the shot, that's what's really important.

Whats going on with the blonds left shoulder? How did you compile the images? Liking the back ground and a bit much on skin softening like the other said.

That shoulder was just a bad mask, didn't get out the pen for this. Just litterly swiped my mouse over them once. The final product won't have that. Not entirely happy with this image though, so probably just going to reshoot.

The skin smoothing was needed as the image was so incredibly noisy, it looked way worse without it. I explained the process in the first post in regards to compiling the images... shot one shot with them in it, then 7 shots without them, blended the 7 shots into an hdr, and then laid the image with them in it on top and masked out everything but them.

I really, really love this!! Wish I could do as good as you did!

coralnutz wrote in post #10052223
That shoulder was just a bad mask, didn't get out the pen for this. Just litterly swiped my mouse over them once. The final product won't have that. Not entirely happy with this image though, so probably just going to reshoot.

The skin smoothing was needed as the image was so incredibly noisy, it looked way worse without it. I explained the process in the first post in regards to compiling the images... shot one shot with them in it, then 7 shots without them, blended the 7 shots into an hdr, and then laid the image with them in it on top and masked out everything but them.

OIC, did you use strobes? If so then your noise shouldn't of been an issue, 100-200iso. I have always wanted to give something like this a shot but never actually tried it. You have something good going hear just work on it a bit more.

Ok, same image, same technique, just spent more than 10 minutes working on it.... cropped as a landscape instead of a portrait. That's how it was shot but originally didn't like the crop so I tried forcing into a portrat. That made me have to crop so far it caused a lot of the noise issues. Wasn't as bad this time and dialed the smoothing layer down to about 50%.

I did shoot with strobes, but the original shots were trynig to get all the ambient and shoot of the people in one exposure. So even shooting at f4, iso 400, I had to get down to like 1/2 and 1 second shutter times to get any ambient lighting to see the buildings. I shot so many shots like that without the hdr technique that I didn't even think that on that one i really didn't need iso 400... hindsight. But next time everything will be at iso 100.

I agree with S.E.V. you have something going here.
It's just that the super crisp effect of city plus hdr makes the models look too soft.
Get a shot where their eyes are sharp as diamonds and you're on your way.

coralnutz wrote in post #10057059
Ok, same image, same technique, just spent more than 10 minutes working on it.... cropped as a landscape instead of a portrait. That's how it was shot but originally didn't like the crop so I tried forcing into a portrat. That made me have to crop so far it caused a lot of the noise issues. Wasn't as bad this time and dialed the smoothing layer down to about 50%.

I did shoot with strobes, but the original shots were trynig to get all the ambient and shoot of the people in one exposure. So even shooting at f4, iso 400, I had to get down to like 1/2 and 1 second shutter times to get any ambient lighting to see the buildings. I shot so many shots like that without the hdr technique that I didn't even think that on that one i really didn't need iso 400... hindsight. But next time everything will be at iso 100.

Superb!!!!! Now that what I'm talking about. The shoulder is much much smother and the skin looks way better.

Next time when you do a similar shoot, properly expose the models using low iso you don't really care about the BG. Then the second shot do the HDR BG so the noise on the models is reduced. I really like the redo.

Sevan

Thanks guys... hoping to try this out again sometime this week if weather cooperates.

It seems like the HDR background is too sharp and obtrusive (both in brightness and focus) compared to the models. It makes a nice background, but I think it would be helpful to tone it down and separate the models from it in terms of brightness, sharpness and color. Attached is the original and my edit, laying in a Lens Blur on the background and doing some cooling of the shadows and warming of the midtones and highlights. Does this go in a direction you are thinking?

I think the lighting on the models is very nice.

Kirk

The first image is the "before" and the second image contains my edits. I enlarged the 500x400 shot from your previous post using Genuine Fractals and then sized it back down for posting here, so it may have gotten a little soft, etc., but you get the point.

If you want this blurred effect for your composite, take your image sequence for your HDR slightly out of focus across the sequence instead of trying to blur the background in PP, because most image processing apps do not do true HDR blurring. That way you'll get the nice bokeh for the background plate in true HDR splendor. For example, focus on the railing in the foreground and set your aperture to get the background blur you want. Then shoot your HDR sequence with focus, aperture, ISO and WB fixed.

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Kirk, what about shooting the background HDR specifically focused on the rail (assuming it exists)? Does that work? Also, the one thing that (to me) makes this look like a fake BG is what looks like a shadow to camera left of, and below, the left-most shoulder. I don't think it is a shadow, so much as dark spots in the BG. It makes it look like a shadow from her right shoulder falling on a painted background wall.