difficult

Man, trying to do some self portraits this afternoon. Just disastrous. Of course I am trying to do HDR, but I had to choose between bland and ugly. I prefer ugly but not enough to prevent me from deleting them all. I really need to get some soft white lights. The entire problem was the light I was getting in them. Face too red and too much in shadow, because I did not have the right color light to pull out some of my more flattering skin tones. Not that i have that many. Can't afford to lose them in yellow and red light.

Are you sure its not a white balance problem?

Frog, it could be, but I don't think it is that easy. I tried messing around with WB and just could not save it. I am pretty sure it is a "did not have a powerful enough forelight of the right color on my face" problem. But I am not certain.

In my limited experimenting, people don't fare so well in hdr. you may want to try the exposure fusion mode in photomatix (if that's what you're using) rather then the tone mapping.