So here are the other winners from earlier today that I gfelt strayed form my normal shooting habits.

I'm typically not an upfront and personal shooter and some will be too close for comfort, but I see so many great photographers doing it so I tried it and I like it. Will I do much of it... eh, Hamid does too good of a job and it'll take me too long to learn his technique so I may stick with my own.

Well I hope you all enjoy and please feel free to comment and help me out if you can.

Disgust! This IMO is a great shot to show disgust, not sure why but I can feel it.


Biiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiig smile! So big your eyes close!


I love this look and the tack sharp focus on her eye, but which is better? Colour:


or B&W?


Deep in thought


Freaked out! I really love this distortion effect and can't wait for my fisheye!


The scream


Well thats pretty much it and I hope you all enjoyed them,

[Tyler]

Another bunch of great image Chris. very cute girl too. How old is she? She looks pretty young but I'm probably wrong. haha

Could you explain and or show you lighting set-up on these? Perfect lighting IMO and I would love to learn a bit.

[Peter Zack]

A great series Chris. To answer your question I prefer the colour version over the B&W but the skin on the nose area is almost too sharp. Every blemish in the skin is visible and might stand a little softening. My favourite shot is the 'scream' followed by 'big smile'. Very well captured. You two seemed to work very well together.

As a final comment, this isn't my favourite style though. I, personally don't like these extreme close portraits nearly as much as most of the other work you've posted. I do like the 2 I mentioned though quite a bit.

[codiac2600]

Another bunch of great image Chris. very cute girl too. How old is she? She looks pretty young but I'm probably wrong. haha

Could you explain and or show you lighting set-up on these? Perfect lighting IMO and I would love to learn a bit.

Thank you Tyler and I hope I can explain the lighting well enough for it to make some sense.

The very first image was shot with this lighting diagram here:


With this setup you'll get very deep shadowing on the opposite side which is great for B&W conversions and also if you want to add some mood. When setting the light I shoot it high and let it taper down to give it a modeling effect (transition) and I make sure the angle isn't too sharp so there isn't a huge shadow created by her nose. You can mimic this lighting setup with a flash shot through a white umbrella, but will spread much wider. The first shot was at about f3ish with the Pentax FA 50mm 1.4 at ISO 100 and 1/125 shutter speed.

The other shots used a two light setup and you can tell because image number one has deeper shadows on the left side of the image or right side of her face (no fill light). the two light setup looks like this:


I set the octagonal box high on the right side and at 1/8 power and the octagonal box on the left is set about chest high and just a tad bit higher than 1/16 power to give it some fill and I could have used a reflector for this, but I only have two hands and I don't use a tripod. I was shooting with either the FA50mm 1.4 or the DA* 16-50mm 2.8 on the rest of the shots and used an aperture around f3-4 and same ISO/shutter as the setup above.

I hope this helps and it can be done with umbrellas and flashes on light stands so opt for what you can easily get and learn to master off camera flash technique like at strobist.

[codiac2600]

A great series Chris. To answer your question I prefer the colour version over the B&W but the skin on the nose area is almost too sharp. Every blemish in the skin is visible and might stand a little softening. My favourite shot is the 'scream' followed by 'big smile'. Very well captured. You two seemed to work very well together.

As a final comment, this isn't my favourite style though. I, personally don't like these extreme close portraits nearly as much as most of the other work you've posted. I do like the 2 I mentioned though quite a bit.

Thank you Peter and it's tough since I'm not a huge fan of PP'ing and these Pentax lenses are just too darn sharp IMO... guess I should buy into another camera system

My only PP'ing is in the RAW converter and it's always add shadow +15ish and boost contrast and making sure the exposure is right and add some brightening here and there. If I use photoshop I tend to only due B&W conversions or do a contrast push to get my desired effect.

We did work well with each other but it was because she had friends and we were all interacting, which it's why it's always a great idea to surround yourself with good friends.

[Tyler]

Thanks Chris! I can't wait to get some umbrellas and another flash so I can really get my strobist side of me going

[and]

She is indeed very cute (well, not in the first one heh) and the shots are very well taken! I do agree about the noose being too sharp, dont really want those details in the skin showing, even tho from a lens reviewing perspective its impressive. And I heard from a pro PP perspective its preferred to have everything extremely sharp from the camera and then selectively softening. I am not surprised u got a good copy of the 16-50 considering u work at a camera shop

[codiac2600]

Thanks Chris! I can't wait to get some umbrellas and another flash so I can really get my strobist side of me going

Sweet! Can't wait to see what you produce.

She is indeed very cute (well, not in the first one heh) and the shots are very well taken! I do agree about the noose being too sharp, dont really want those details in the skin showing, even tho from a lens reviewing perspective its impressive. And I heard from a pro PP perspective its preferred to have everything extremely sharp from the camera and then selectively softening. I am not surprised u got a good copy of the 16-50 considering u work at a camera shop

It's funny how I don't even notice these imperfections while she is sitting in front of me, but the lens makes my eye bleeds with all the detail. I definitely love to PP with a sharper image first than trying to bring back detail from a not so sharp image. I'll do a few skin softening shots and post them back on here for some critique.

[roentarre]

Chris, you are able to make a young girl showing these natural expressions. That is already quite hard to do.

I prefer to go close up personally as more able to get the spirit in the eyes (or the glint in the eyes). Getting props and background set up are just too hard to do and taking too much time to create a theme. Once I saw a studio setting done just to show a butcher trying to slaughter a man with one hand on his throat and another hand about to chop the knife into the guy. The whole setting was quite bloody but it was damned effective to do so.

Very nice series again.