Studio portrait - Fiddler Katie

5DMII, 85L, Westcott fluorescent softboxes.

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The lighting is excellent. Excellent hairlight placement as well as the background light, and the lighting pattern on her face and on the instrument is wonderful. I seldom see this nice of a portrait on this site.

Suggestions. I would remove the fill light catchlights. I don't care for the lopped off fingers, either all of them or none of them but not 1/2 of them.

Benji

It's a nice well lit portrait but it appears as the skin smoothing is a little heavy

+1 on the skin smoothing really heavy and it stops on her face and is not on her neck which makes it more obvious. I would back off on the smoothing it has some great lighting otherwise.

Superb lighting and pose. Processing ruins it for me. The skin looks fake and weird.

Good lighting mate. +1 for too much skin smoothing.

Pretty much what the others have said. Great lighting but the skin is way too over-processed.

The focus may be a little soft, judging by the fingers and the loss of detail on the ring, but I cannot really tell because of the excessive skin smoothing. The lighting is great, however.

+1 on what Benji said but....

I love her smile but since you went with the skin smoothing I think a teeth whitening is in order. It also looks a little bit off since her neck is a different tone and texture than her overly smooth face.

Can you post the original?

Ditto on the post processing. A bit too much and it does not match with the neckline. Perhaps cutting back on the face and warming up the color on the neck and hand would even it out. Otherwise great lighting and nice pose.

A nice face shot and lighting, but too much skin smoothing. I'm really having a problem with the violin, it looks like her head is growing out of it. Is this a picture of a violin or people picture? You have two competing objects in the frame. The partial fingers coming in from stage left are strange, are they the fingers of the woman or someone else? Why not put the violin in true playing position under her chin and back the camera away a little so there is some natural connection between her and the violin.

Lessen the smoothing on the face, and add a tiny bit on the neck to tone down the neck wrinkles.

^ What they all said. Great lighting but that blurry skin...

the skin is too smooth. she looks face. the lightning is great.