Jessica, please critique

[sndsgood]

tell me how i did with Miss Jessica below. be brutally honest about how i did. I am really working on my lighting skills and posing and everything else lol. looking it over i see a few things that are standing out to me. but dont want to say anything until others have posted.


Jessica1_pp by Sndsgood, on Flickr

[Steven G Webb]

Do you have the original SOOC? If you want critique on the lighting, posing and exposure you need not muddy the water with a processed image. Processing tends to mask the original results and this image appears to be heavily processed. To explain the impact each element of photo making has on an image it's best if that's all we are looking at.

Steve

[Jay Delost]

What focal length is this portrait?

[sndsgood]

i believe this is the sooc shot.

and the focal length was 35mm. not what i would have liked to use. but we were in her apartment and had no room whatsoever.


sooc by Sndsgood, on Flickr

[Jay Delost]

Having the space to shoot portraits is definitely an unforeseen challenge, for me at least. It just looked as there might have been some lens distortion, related to WA at close distances. That's why I had asked.

[keithdewey3]

Shooting hi key in a small space requires very careful control of the light to keep it from spilling on the subject. Probably one of the toughest lighting set ups you can try.

You have a nice 45 degree turn of her body.

In this shot you have quite a bit of light spill.
Jessica is very pretty. She has a unique face shape. I think I would have turned her face a little more to her right and then used short lighting to narrow her face.

Did you use Portrait Professional to process this? The reason I ask is there appears to be some reshaping of her cheek and I know PP will do this sometimes, especially with face shapes that are not traditional.

[sndsgood]

yeah i used portrait professional. first time using it so i think i went a bit overboard. hence the oversmoothed face and not so smooth neck line. yeah she had told me she had a huge living room and dining room and then when i got there i could only have the backdrop about 7' wide and she was only about 3' off the background with the softbox literally a foot or two away from her so my 7' backdrop became about a 4' wide backdrop. but i figured it was a good learning process. amazing how much diffrence the space makes in the lighting

[Sailor Blue]

It sounds like you certainly had some difficulties taking the image. The pose is good but there are some problems with the image.

Unfortunately the image looks to be underexposed a fairly large amount. I suggest you look at Benji's tutorial.

Benji - PS Technique For Checking Exposure (Portraits)

It looks like there was a window to the model's right and your light high and to the model's left. The combination resulted in almost flat lighting. Remember, it is the shadows that give a 2 dimensional image of a face an appearance of having 3 dimensions. Check out the classical lighting styles.

Portrait Lighting - Names for different portrait lighting set-ups in photography

You should also study Benji's tutorial on lighting and posing.

Benji's Studio Lighting and Posing Tutorial

[sndsgood]

ive been reading allot the last few days and im thinking i need to invest in a light meter so i can adjust each light instead of guessing. esp. with trying to guess with an ab400 and then an sb-900. think i could save myself allot of hassle and trial and error by getting the lighing better that way.

i had a 30x60 softbox to camera left and then my sb900 thru an umbrella on the right. i could have possibly worked with the angle of the softbox more to gotten a bit better light. the sb900 was kinda in about the only place i could get it without it getting into the picture. or maybe i could have pulled the sb900 back more towards the camera definatly something to think about.

[Rain Lily]

You did a nice job on her teeth but I think they are slightly too bright.