Last night I shot her

[PhilF]

This is my first studio type shoot. 3 months since I started photography... and I'm loving every minute of it.

c & c appreciated

[daq7]

Nice picture. But if the title is last night i shot her I want at least a heroin needle in frame.

[PhilF]

Nice picture. But if the title is last night i shot her I want at least a heroin needle in frame.

thanks... next time I'll bring the heroin and needle... problem is where do I get one. :8:

[daq7]

Haha. No clue...

[jetrim]

Love the composition, though the post processing could be tweeked to give a much stronger presentation. Be very careful about skin smoothing, too much and the skin starts to look plastic. I posted a quick tutorial last year for a relatively quick and easy method to get natural looking skin (there are far more advanced methods, but this is a good starting point) it's here: Skin - my workflow The other issue I see with this one is even more easily corrected (with the clone stamp tool) and that's the flyaway frizzy hair around the edges - just clone it out with a soft clone leaving just a hint of frizz at the edges so as to avoid that "cut and paste" look. Color cast is a bit on the magenta side, which isn't really an issue with olive skin, but will cause problems in the future when shooting models that are more fair skinned (they'll look slightly purple). Always a good idea to do a custom white balance when shooting with a new lighting set-up.

Studio work is addictive!

[PhilF]

Love the composition, though the post processing could be tweeked to give a much stronger presentation. Be very careful about skin smoothing, too much and the skin starts to look plastic. I posted a quick tutorial last year for a relatively quick and easy method to get natural looking skin (there are far more advanced methods, but this is a good starting point) it's here: Skin - my workflow The other issue I see with this one is even more easily corrected (with the clone stamp tool) and that's the flyaway frizzy hair around the edges - just clone it out with a soft clone leaving just a hint of frizz at the edges so as to avoid that "cut and paste" look. Color cast is a bit on the magenta side, which isn't really an issue with olive skin, but will cause problems in the future when shooting models that are more fair skinned (they'll look slightly purple). Always a good idea to do a custom white balance when shooting with a new lighting set-up.

Studio work is addictive!

thank you so much jetrim. I really appreciate your c&c. :thumbsup: How do you custom white balance in the studio ? I was using "flash" as my w/b settings.

[jetrim]

There are a bunch of different ways, but all involve going into your camera settings (where you found the "flash" setting and selecting "custom white balance" then shooting a grey card, digital taget, color-checker, or even a white pice of paper under the lighting conditions you're going to shoot the model. Once that's done, your LCD will say "white balance complete" or something similar, then you're good to go, until you change the lighting setup. Most high end lights are UV corrected (profoto, broncolor, balcar, etc.) and will produce a color temp @ 5300 kelvin. Cheap lights are not (alien bees, white lightning, interfit, etc.) so they are usually in the 5600k range.

I use the x-rite color checker as it has 2 panels, one for WB and one for color/tone which can be a big help when the color has to be exactly right (product/fashion) instead of just pleasing to the eye. but a piece of white printer paper will do just as well for general shooting.

[PhilF]

.... or even a white pice of paper under the lighting conditions you're going to shoot the model. .

So I can just use a white piece of paper... let the model hold it....shoot... then use it as a custom white balance? (that would be the quickest and cheap way, right?) And if I move the lights, I'll do that again.... is that correct? Will this matter even if the background is not white?

[jetrim]

Yep. Break open your camera's manual, they usually devote a page to custom white balance. Background color doesn't matter, you're telling the camera what color white is with the paper, it'll do the calculations from there all by itself.

[daq7]

Shoot raw. Pick the wb afterward. There must be flaws with this strat. What are they?

[jetrim]

Shoot raw. Pick the wb afterward. There must be flaws with this strat. What are they?

Time... When I first started shooting digital a year and a half ago it wasn't a big deal to spend an hour (or three) retouching those one or two great images from a Saturday afternoon's outing. Now I'm shooting 4 nights a week and editing up to 200 images at a time from each of those shoots to get them back to models and clients as fast as possible so as not to get snowed under. Anything I can do in the camera instead of in front of the computer (after midnite and before I have to leave for my "day job" at 5:30 or 6am) is a plus.

Ever shoot a scene that had no whites or grays in it? Know what your photo editing program will tell you? INVALID SELECTION. Then how do you adjust it correctly? It's happened to me - that's when I started using the color checker on a regular basis.
Again, more time...

[Lava Lamp]

Nice. More light and sharpening in the eyes would improve it, I think.

[gahspidy]

Very nice framing on this portrait, Phil. Great tips and suggestions from Jet, and i was also going to add what Lava stated about having a bit more light in the eyes. The moisture on the skin is highlighting from the lights, and smoothing those out some will help.
Very nice nonetheless,
good work, Phil.