Okay, so I scrapped the more artistic pursuits this weekend for doing a studio style portrait. Let's just say I don't have an optimal setup for doing shots like this - one slave strobe and a vivitar 283, and blanket for a background.


I ended up bouncing the slave off of a piece of white board for the main light, and bouncing the 283 off another piece of white board off to the other side for the fill.


My initial thought was to only use the slave, and to use the on-board flash to trigger it. But even the on-board flash to "manual discharge" on the K110D and manual mode (to avoid the pre-flash) the slave still fires an instant too fast and none of the slave's light makes it to the sensor - so I end up having to hand-fire the Vivitar 283 to get it to work. (using a longer exposure to give me adequate time to hit the button)

So then we went outside to do some more portraits, including his siblings too. I prefer these, and after the nightmare that was last night (a different story) it gave me some encouragement.









and then we had some fun - I absolutely love this pictures


comments and critiques welcome, as I have a whole lot to learn, seeing this is my first serious attempt at portraits.. I really enjoyed doing these though, and I may have another job lined up because of this one. Could be fun.

Thanks for looking

[SWEngineer]

Hi Dan. Great feedback you're getting here. [Kind of rare in forum land... Kudos to you folks. ]

Here are a few thoughts regarding the new "sky" background:
1) Good job with the mask: no obvious halos or such.
2) Like the prior comment about the tie blending with the shirt, there's not much contrast between the shirt & the background. I don't think it should be glaring, but maybe not this subtle.
3) Masking the young man's seat makes him appear to float in the sky in an awkward posture - very uncomfortable looking. Unless you want him as a mime, he needs something to sit on.
4) Having his fingers cut off doesn't work at all for me. Maybe fix this and #3 with a much tighter crop (from the waist up or maybe even higher?)
5) Maybe just a touch more light on the shadow side of his face would work?

Hope you find this helpful.

-Mark

[khardur]

Unfortunately, I didn't mask the young man's seat. I looked at the shot again, and the seat isn't visible at all in that shot - the only thing you can see under him is the end of the old background and the start of the wall behind. Uncomfortable looking or not, even there he looks like he's floating. ugh.

But thanks for all the other suggestions. This thread has been very helpful and eye opening. (and again, I never gave the tie a second thought...!) Perhaps when it gets converted to B&W I'll darken it some to give it a little contrast. Definitely things to look out for so I don't have to do as much PP next time!! I like to do as little of that as possible.

[little laker]

Stu: I played around with the background a bit - took about 10 minutes or so. What do you think? This pose didn't have the harsh shadow on the nose either...

Attachment 4597


thankfully I did a nice group outdoor portrait over the weekend that's allowing me to get some better equipment, including a background or two.

Other than the floating in the air which has already been addressed I like it. It's a big improvement

I didn't finish off the bench in the 1 that I did either. I just cut around it, so it looks a little funny.

If you really want to get crazy you can probably cut a bench out of another picture and paste it in. Or take a pic of a bench with the right background and do the same thing.

I like this sort of picture and photoshop. It's fun to play around with.

That reminds me, I have to photoshop a very important picture. I don't know if I'll be able to post it.

[Nancy]

The first one, the background is distracting. I'd burn/dodge that instead of trying to replace on a new background.

The others are nice, but underexposed a bit. I'd play around with curves on all of them.