Portrait of Ree Ja

[gahspidy]

So having not posted anything here for a while, i thought it would be good to put this one up and get some feedback.

I had a shoot with Ree Ja a little while back and going through some more of the shots, this portrait always kept me coming back to it. Converted to b&w, I'd like to continue on a series of b&w portraits of interesting characters.

What thinks ye?

Thanks

[Greg McCary]

I think you did an excellent job on the conversion, lighting, crop and the pose. If I had a nitpik it would be the hair cutting across her thumb. Easily fixed if you chose so.
On a side note I have been watching your great work on your flickr stream and also your website. Nice stuff Gary.

[LeeIs]

She definitely has character in those eyes. I like how her hair isn't perfect and kind of runs on her face, kinda rough. the lighting is pretty much right on. the tattoo ads to this shot also.
why is that bottom right hip line soft? is that her shadow or part of her? maybe it's just a highlight bouncing on her. overall very nice.

[gahspidy]

Thanks very much for the feedback and critique Greg and Liban.
@Greg. . . I did notice that hair on her thumb too. Good eye. I thought about it and decided that since I was not going for glamour here and really wanted these to be character studies so to speak I will let things be as they fell. I appreciate the good words Greg and they help alot when I'm into a slump as i have been feeling lately.

@Liban. . .She does have character and is one of my favs. Would love to have her back again sometime. You are right about the edge on the right looking soft. It is the reflection from her latex dress she was wearing. The shiny latex does refelct the light from the edges like that and that edge was where the main light was. Thanks for your time.

[Marc2B4]

Flat light, no lighting pattern. Nice tonality but it's almost a passport type image. Your main light is positioned about 30 degrees to the right of the lens axis. No fill light or background light. The hair over the thumb is nitpicking, you can take that out in a second in PS. The composition is great, I'd love to see her shot with about a 4:1 light ratio.

Mark

[gahspidy]

Flat light, no lighting pattern. Nice tonality but it's almost a passport type image. Your main light is positioned about 30 degrees to the right of the lens axis. No fill light or background light.
Mark

Thanks for your time and thoughts on this, Mark.

This was actually shot with a commonly used Loop Lighting set up. Key light above and to the side creating a slight loop shadow on the darker side of the face. A fill light on the camera left very lightly filling in, and a background light which was meant to lighten the dark gray seamless paper so that she would stand out well from it.

I appreciate your critique and suggestions, but I respectfully disagree with your assessment that this is "flat lighting". Flat light typically has no shadows, even tone with little change in highlight and shadow, low contrast and no modeling of the subject. The very fact that you can see where the key light is placed by the shadow would indicate the lighting is anything but flat.

This is certainly not as dramatic as you have suggested you would like to see, but this was less about the light and more about the character.

I agree with the hair on the thumb and yep it would be a quick "fix", just not sure I want to clean this up at all.

Thanks.

[draymorton]

If it were mine, I might try to do something about the blurring on the right side. But it's not that big a deal. Also, I think I'm seeing sharpening artifacts/haloing around the edges. Watch that - I do it all the time, too. The lighting gives this image a nice retro (70s) feel and the pose and tones are fantastic. Super model, too.

Honestly, the thing that jumped right out at me as being a clear negative was the waterrmark. I would recommend a (much) smaller, more professional-looking logo (doesn't have to be anything fancy) without the copyright character.

[gahspidy]

Thank you fro the good points, Dray. So you mean you don't like my oil stain. . er. . water mark? lol Yeah, been wanting to find time to come up with a simple logo/branding type thing but will have to stick with this till then. I did make it less prominent though so as not to be so in your face. I did notice the sharpening halos as well after exporting for web and should have reduced it then. glad you pointed it out. Here is a re edit taking some of the pointers into account. Fixed blurred edges and sharpening halo.

Also thanks to Greg, Liban and Mark i decided to go with the removal of the stray hair on thumb. It was in a awkward spot and was better off without.

Here is the edit, thanks all for the good eyes and suggestions.