Ask me what you want.

I hope this is ok, Mods, if it's not please delete !

My inbox is full, well almost - of questions asking about focus, lighting, lenses, photoshop etc etc.

so instead of answering the same Q 200 times over I thought I'd start a Q thread in the child section, as I mainly photograph babies & children, most of the Q's asked are about my child photos.

so ask what you want & I'm happy to help, and give you tips - there's hundreds of awesome photographers here, so if any of them want to jump in - please do !

I've been most impressed by your postprocessing workflow. What do you do to get skin tones so smooth while not appearing to hurt detail at all? Also, what's your black and white conversion workflow? ...your B&W shots are gorgeous.

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Thanks for your Q Jordan.

Smooth skin, for me it's about the light that is on the subject's face, I'm careful as to where I position the person, it makes for less PPing later on, I'm not a huge fan of having to photoshop every imperfection, so any marks on the face are cloned out using the bandaid tool, I zoom right in and use a small soft brush.

I shoot everything in colour & in RAW.
Not all images work as a black & white, I choose images that I think will take to black & white well.
In ACR, I desaturate first. I like lighter black & whites so I adjust the temp slider to the right, add in some blacks, and some contrast. Open in CS4 & fine tune, blemishes & eye whites are dodged.

hope this helps

subscribing.

Please can you tell me how you get your images so sharp and also how you get the eyes in your photos to stand out as well as they do.

I do love your work, by the way!

Also subscribing.

Thank you for this! I am portuguese, so can you tell me what do you mean with "fine tune"?

What is your favorite lens that you use most of the time?
Thank you

I use L series lenses, I'm addicted to them. But the main way I get sharp photos is the toggle the focus point to the eye area, have my lighting spot on & have my shutter speed spot on,good focus is to do with your camera's settings, a typical outdoor portrait type shot for me would go somthing like this - depending on the light of course - iso 200 f/2.8 1/250 sec - I always aim to shoot aboove 1/160s

Eyes : Great focus & catch lights to begin with help, alot of the time I don't need to PP the eyes, but if I do, it's usually only a small amount of dodging in photoshop of the eye whites & catchlights.

To get good catchlights, have the light coming in from behind & slighly above you & onto your subject, a good way to determine good light is to look at the person's eyes & face. If you see good even light without sun blinding them, then you're good to go, you then meter from there.

Fine tune - is to to make small adjustments for optimal quality.

After having my 24-70 2.8L calibrated, I find it had to choose between that & the 85 1.2L
They sit fairly equal at the monent, they are both awesome lenses for different reasons, and all the reasons they are awesome are needed by me.

for the work I do, i don't think I need any other lens - perhaps the 50 1.2L one day there's always room for more L glass !

thanks for sharing

Hats off to Seona for this Q&A session. Very considerate and generous.

Thank you.

"so ask what you want & I'm happy to help"

Ok you asked for it here goes.... I love your name, how is it pronounced?.....
Oh wait was it photography related only? Oh Ok.... what does ARC stand for?

Interesting. I will be checking back and will possibly come up with a question after I check out your site.

lol, my name = see oh nah - Seona!

ACR - Adobe Camera Raw

Thanks for starting this thread