One light in the basement

My son helped me out this evening, getting a little more practice with the new Alien Bees AB800.

Set it up with the standard 7" reflector, camera right, at 1/32nd power. It's so much more fun to shoot with a monolight than with a speedlight; the modeling light is great!

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i hate looking at that font.. it is so overused and tacky.... might as well use ATROX and or IMPACT...

Wow - thank you for that completely useless, yet utterly tactless, comment. I'll get right on changing my font to make it more to your liking.

u put a photo and u wanted C&C- otherwise why put it up there?
if you wan the rest of c&c - the right side of the face with the partial shadow doesnt work as well
if you cant take C&C dont post - or take what ppl say and think about what they've said
you think i'm being mean.. i'm not.. i have better things to do - i dont need to put anyone down - i'm trying to give you advice so your output looks decent

Looks fine, if you were going for very hard, contrasty light.

i like it . some times,the tendency with kids is to shoot them with softer full light. nice capture

saturnin wrote in post #11722687
u put a photo and u wanted C&C- otherwise why put it up there?
if you wan the rest of c&c - the right side of the face with the partial shadow doesnt work as well
if you cant take C&C dont post - or take what ppl say and think about what they've said
you think i'm being mean.. i'm not.. i have better things to do - i dont need to put anyone down - i'm trying to give you advice so your output looks decent

Yes, I understand about CONSTRUCTIVE criticism/critique. Your comment about the watermark font has no bearing on the image. If it were a printed image, obviously the watermark would not be there.

I appreciate anyone who takes the time to provide useful feedback, and if you have some, I'd appreciate it as well.

Regarding your other comment about the partial shadow ("doesn't work"), that's not particularly useful. Had you explained what it was you didn't like about it, then I may have been able to take something away from your comment and use it to get better. As it is, you have truly not provided me with anything usable at all.

I don't mean to come off sounding so cranky, but honestly it is a little upsetting when someone comes into a thread, throws around useless criticism, and then claims they're being helpful. If you're so busy, then don't waste your time or mine.

How many times does this same conversation need to happen before people get it??

azpix wrote in post #11725128
i like it . some times,the tendency with kids is to shoot them with softer full light. nice capture

I was just messing around with the new light, experimenting with how the degree of shadow affects the width of the face. If I were going to recompose this shot, I would try to get more and less of the right eye (photo left) in shadow and see which I prefer. As it is, the amount of his right eye that's visible seems a little awkward - needs to be more or less, but I'm not sure which one.

I suppose that's what saturnin was referring to, although I'm not sure.

The other goal of the shoot was to get a few sample photos to practice my eye sharpening on. In this one, I LOVE the way his iris turned out, although I think I overdid it on the sharpening of his eyelashes. Thoughts?

Also, I'm wondering about the placement of his left eye in the frame - would it be better if it were less-centered? As I already noted, I wasn't really aiming for a usable shot, but I stumbled into an image that's almost a keeper. If I try to do it again, I want to maximize it.

Thanks.