Simple headshot

[jetrim]

I think I've covered the bases on this one, but I'm wondering about something in specific, and want to see if anyone else picks up on it or not...

The girl in this image has a pretty good chance of becoming the next Taylor Swift. She's not a model, but a 14 yr old country singer. For the baseball fans, she sang the National Anthem at the Marlins vs Cardinals game last night...

[NKP68]

Beautiful lighting, complection, catcthlight in sharp blue eyes. I'm not well versed in portrait work but I like this a lot. The only thing that I would comment on is her right ear ring, may be a bit to bright and distracting. Great image. Was I close?
Ed

[armando_m]

Beautiful shot!

the corners of her mouth look odd
a bit of a reflection on her lower lip
her hair seems to have more light than her face
perhaps a bit more DOF to include the ear ring?

[arne saknussen]

I am no expert on model shots, but I am drawn to her teeth instead of her eyes.

[jetrim]

This was shot with a 4'x6' profoto softbox, and a hairlight on a boom above & behind with a 7" reflector and a 20deg grid. The hairlight metered at f/5.6, one stop hotter than the Key light, as planned. The camera was my Fuji S-5 with a Nikkor 300mm 2.8 stopped down to f/4. Honestly, I'm not worried about the lighting or depth of field as both are right where I wanted them.

[draymorton]

It's a great shot - definitely different than the run-of-the-mill headshot in a number of ways.

But it looks oversharpened (or something) to me.

The coloring in the eyes is interesting - opalescent - but strange. Did you put in black rings around her irises?

The skin may be a little plastic-looking, as well, though not by much.

I might minimize the crease near the center in her bottom lip, too.

Understand that I'm reaching here. The more accomplished the photographer, the more I tend to nitpick.

p.s. BIG congrats on getting her.

[Anbesol]

Great shot, as usual Jet.

Excellent detail, the saturation of her skin seems a smidgen too high for my taste, and the complexion unnaturally soft. Dont know how much of this was makeup or processing. Her eye color seems unnatural, but it very well could be her eye color. Are they contacts?

The thing I suspect you are wanting to see if someone picks up on is the lack of clothing around the shoulders or chest.

[ksbryan0]

Beautiful portrait. The OOF ear-ring did catch my eye - not a big deal, but just a distraction. The only thing that I'd really want to change would be to make the catchlights in her eyes round instead of square.

[jetrim]

Arne Saknussen was closest to what I was fishing for. Her mother tried to cancel the shoot because they didn't have time to get to the salon to have her hair recolored so she had very heavy roots showing - she also had considerably discolored teeth, not that they're yellow, just very spotty coloration. I promised that whatever they could do in the salon, I could do in photoshop. They were happy with the session. We spent an hour on makup, 2 hours shooting about 100 frames, 3 wardrobe changes and when asked to choose favorites, she narrowed that down to 47 images :lol:

Very little work was done on the skin, just blemish removal and some digital eyebrow tweezing. The advantage to working with someone this young is that their skin rarely needs any work. The eyes probably are just a smidgen "over the top" 20% saturation of the irises, dodged in moons opposite the catchlights and burned the iris edges 13%. No work to the lips beyond sharpening for the "wet" look. This is sharpened for print so it will look just a bit oversharpened on the web.

[draymorton]

And I didn't even notice the roots... or the teeth. Shows what I know. :lol:

[ScapeGrace]

She looks older than 14 in this shot but still young and vital. I also noticed those dark rings around her irises, very unique. I have no critique, not only because I don't see one that's not been stated but because I have no sway in portraits and shouldn't really be giving advice to ANYBODY when I don't even know what I'm doing. It's professional obviously and I would definitely entrust you with taking mine...not that that's much of a compliment haha. Amazing job jetrim, your talent is obvious and commendable on every level.

[gahspidy]

Congrats on the gig with her. I was going to point out the very things that dray touched on but you covered them in your reply.

Well done, both capture and process.

[PhilF]

Jet,
I notice she has a lot of redness on her face.... I masked the spots and decreased the redness a bit. What do you think?

[jetrim]

Nice job Phil - I like it. May have to go back and make some final adjustments now.

[gahspidy]

Nice job Phil - I like it. May have to go back and make some final adjustments now.

Its a fine edit, but personally I prefer the original. The redness looks natural and adds a glow to her face. Without it it seems sorta flat and cold.

[draymorton]

Its a fine edit, but personally I prefer the original. The redness looks natural and adds a glow to her face. Without it it seems sorta flat and cold.

And flatout too yellow in places. Somewhere in between might be good, erring on the side of the original.

[GB1]

Very clean shot Jet. I prefer the bottom one's color, but I do agree that it's slightly too red. One thing that I do not like about the shot is that there seems to be too much skin showing in the neck/upper chest area. I really want to see a cute baby blue strap or shirt there. It also seems to be a tad too smooth, implying post processing (but maybe not - 14 y.o.s don't have many wrinkles!). This shot makes a lot of impact and it's unusual in that I tend to look at her teeth before her eyes.

G

[Anbesol]

I think she looks a little green in the edit. Though the original is, I think, slightly oversaturated.