Easy Exposure - Topic: First step in portrait photos

Mandrake on First step in portrait photos

Mon, 03 Feb 2014 12:44:26 -0800

I absolutely love the first photo.
Your camera appears to have captured the serene and thoughtful nature of this woman.
I've included a crop that may better bring attention to her very expressive face.

Rachidk on First step in portrait photos

Mon, 03 Feb 2014 11:57:29 -0800

Thank you Oksana & Mandrake for your precious remarks. I realize that it is much more complex for portrait photo. Practice makes perfect, they say, so I will have to practice and slowly getting there. Here are two more shots. May I ask you to comment please

Rachid

Mandrake on First step in portrait photos

Mon, 03 Feb 2014 05:21:29 -0800

Rachidk... As Oksana points out, portrait photography can be most difficult. You've done a commendable job.

The problems with #2 can easily be fixed by eliminating the walking man in Ps and cropping a bit more from the bottom.
With #3, I'd try cropping the right side of the photo - as much as possible without reaching her shoulder.
#1, certainly my favorite, can easily be made even better by straightening the post in Lr's lens correction section.

Good luck on this quest.

easyexposure on First step in portrait photos

Sun, 02 Feb 2014 13:01:58 -0800

Pretty good start, Rachidk. Portraits are always more difficult when landscapes. There is a lot to think about.

In terms of color I like #1 and 2. #3 is a bit too green to my taste.

In terms of composition:

#1 is my favorite. I would probably use a bit wider aperture to get background a bit more blurry so. I do like the fact that you can see her environment, which fits her perfectly.

In #2 you should have paid attention to what is going on in the background. Person walking out of her right shoulder - not good. Also you don't want to crop at the joins. In this photo you cut her hands off.

#3 At this kind of horizontal head-shoot crop, when the model looks to the side, ofter rule of thirds works better then the centered composition.

Rachidk on First step in portrait photos

Sun, 02 Feb 2014 12:31:07 -0800

Hello everyone

Well after landscape, I have started to have a go at portrait photos. I would appreciate your comments and critics too as I am sure it will help me move forward for sure. I am sharing 3 photos using different approach so to reproduce the various tones. I had a hard time with the backlight on that day as it was cloudy.The first one is the natural skin tone while for the other two I degraded a little bit with sepia. I did post image processing using Capture NX2 software from Nikon.

Settings were as follows:

Aperture Priority:

Photo 1 - Natural skin tone - f/11 - 1/10 sec ISO-200

Photo 2 - f/6.3 - 1/125 sec - ISO-200

Photo 3 - f/6.3 - 1/160 sec - ISO-200

Thanking you in advance