This is Whitney. You might remember her from the a few of my other challenges in the past. She came back for more theater headshots, so I thought i'd enter my favorite from that shoot for this month's free study.
Editing was fairly minimal.
Believe it or not i didn't do anything to the whites of her eyes. they were so bright white. this shot had hardly any adjustment from raw, lit with one large softbox on camera right.
PP included raw conversion, cloning / patching stray hairs here and there, and that's about it. resized, smart sharpen, save for web. done.
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Place: 206 out of 521 Avg (all users): 5.8295 Avg (commenters): 7.0000 Avg (participants): 5.7624 Avg (non-participants): 6.0714 Views since voting: 1252 Views during voting: 220 Votes: 129 Comments: 10 Favorites: 0
Nicely done on this shot, its too bad you couldn't have received some more 6s or 7s instead of those 3s and 4s, it definitely is a well done portrait.
Pros
- You did a nice job of getting the catch light in her eyes. This is probably an obvious concept to most people here, but without them the subject really does feel dead, so that is one of the first things I look for when looking at a portrait.
- Unlike a couple of the comments already posted, I think you actually did a great job of getting her eyes in focus. I especially like the DOF here, where here hair and sweater are losing focus. I think you actually did an excellent job of keeping her face sharp with that 2.8 f-stop.
- I really like the nice simple background in this shot. It always helps in portraits to not have too much, if anything, going on in the background. The color is a nice choice and it doesn't distract me from the portrait itself.
Cons
- I kind of agree with a comment that was already posted that says she seems a little unsure. I think part of this is because of the angle of the shot. Usually when you look down on the subject it makes them less important (I don't know if that is the best word choice). This can be effective, take for instance a shot of a child, it makes them seem more vulnerable, the feeling that they need someone to look up to, someone to help them. It seems like this shot is pretty close to straight on, possibly shot down a little bit, but her eyes seem to be looking up, that is what gives me the feeling of looking down on her, or the unsure type feel. Try to get her eyes looking at you, or even down, maybe even try shooting up at her just a bit and see if that maybe gives us more of a confident feeling.
- I actually like the blue eyes, but I am listing it as a con because given the advanced editing guidelines, I think you could have made them a little deeper, so they stand out a bit more. This also would have helped with the feeling of confidence.
- The hair that is flipped behind her head on the left is a little distracting to me. I had to look at it for a bit to make sure it wasn't just disappearing. I think this is because it is in the dark part of this photo, on a quick glance, because of the lack of light, her hair almost looks like it just disappears to me. Try to either have some of her hair fall to her back, rather than flip around, or change the lighting a bit to make it obvious the hair isn't just gone.
Overall I think you did an excellent job with this portrait. Hopefully some of my comments will make your future shots even better.
Great portrait Jon, just love the DOF and the background color. I agree that the eyes aren't really sharp. The shadow on her left cheek is a little bit too strong. I love blue eyes... I wish I have one...
Despite your title, she looks a little unsure. Wish the eyes had the same sharpness in focus as the hair seems to have. Nice simple colors in the image.
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