These pictures, well, Jessica had recently aquired some new clothes. Thus, asking her to pose for me was like asking my dad to eat a piece of pie (preferably chocolate cream, but he's not picky...). Hopefully I'll get a chance to do something like this with the rest of my siblings.
12 comments:
Hi
I am impressed! Kudo's to you for your creativity. Nice lighting on most - I realize you are extremely limited as to placement of windows in relationship to subject matter/background and where you can set up, etc.
Very creative with your posing. My only suggestion - and you did not know this before - is that you position Jessica's hand in a more feminine pose. The pose you chose is the masculine pose, but women can get away with using it, but guys always have to use this pose and obviously must not use the feminine pose. (I think I spelled that incorrectly)
The fem pose would be with the hand turned so that the baby finger was facing out towards the camera. Do you know what I mean? You would see the cupped part of her hand...a little tunnel. The reason that women do not usually show the whole broad side of the back of the hand is because of the veins that stick out. More of an older woman issue than teenager. It is still more attractive to see the cupped hand for a woman if she is in a dress.
-Pam
Your input then I shall continue
Yes, you're right. You are talking about picture #3, right? I can remember now that it is a man's pose.
Jessica made up most of the poses, except for the mirror and bench ones. We were in front of the two big windows in the livingroom, and it was at night so I was using all "un-sun" light. Which means that it was a ludicrously slow shutter speed. But it turned out fine, I thought.
Yes, they truned out fine. There was only one that looked like she did not have direct light - #4. But the picts at small so it is hard to tell.
I really like the mirror shots. Next time have your subject move the mirror so that the all of the eyes show and do not get intersected by the mirror itself. But I LOVE the shot and very pleased you thought of it.
OK...great effort and another "A" today. That is IF the pictures are in focus. Are they sharp? They look like they are on the blog but it is hard to tell for sure.
Yes, I was going to mention the focusing thing. I believe they are all in focus, but in some of the photos, the focus square thingy wasn't on her face, maybe it was on her arm or neck or something. I couldn't really move the camera to get her face on the square because of my limitations on angle and zooming. This probably didn't make a difference because there would have only been a couple inches' difference. At any rate, I'll give you the CD of all the pictures tonight and you can judge for yourself. If you click on the photos that are on my blog post, they should take you to a different page where they will be blown way up.
I will try that.
This takes a long time, sorry. I guess we should have gotten together. So much wasted time just waiting. Good for middle of the week corresponding though.
Now then, since the eyes are very important to have in focus in portrait work, actually the MOST important thing to have in fosus, you should at least focus on something that is on the same focus plain as the eyes would be located. Such as, hmmmm, let's take the last picture...here we have her hand which probably would be on the same plain. Her top hand, lower hand or even stomach. Her elbow I think is sticking out too far.
Now the big deciding factor as to how picky you have to be with the focusing plain is going to be your fstop. If you had to use 5.6 then you bave to be very sure your are on the same focus plane as the eyes. If you use f8 or even smaller you can be a bit more liberal. What fstop did you use?
For #4, #6, #8 you could make a reflector out of cardboard and tinfoil and reflect light back into Jessica's face to light up her eyes a bit. Do you see wht I mean? The one that would have been the most helpful would have been the mirror pict. Catch the light at a low angle to bounce onto her face and then it would be brighter in the reflection.
Okay...for like the first 4 or 5 pictures, I was using f-8, and an ISO of 400. That made it a 2-second shutter speed, which was just silly, so I changed my f-stop to the widest it would go (4.0 or 4.5, I believe) and bumped my ISO to 800. The last picture, if I rememmber correctly, was of such that with my cmera horizontally, I could have her face on the focus point. Make sense?
Oh, I just saw your comment about the reflector...yes. I could've had my mom hold a reflector, because I do have a refector, one that I made. And yes, I can see what you mean.
Believe it or not I understood you - HA!
Glad you are using your knowledge well and changing iso and shutter speeds and fstops to meet the situation.
BUT, in portrait work, the lower the ISO you can use the better. The reason for that is "digital noise". All those colored dots you see when you use highter ISO settings. Lower ISO setting help eliminate that noise. So if your subject can sit still for the longer seconds you are better off in the long run.
Black and white is more forgiving with the grainy look and often looks very cool, but color picts look yucky with the colored dots.
Exactly. That'd be why I started out at 400, but changed it up when I thought that it would be a stinkin' shame if she moved just a tiny bit n half or three-quarters of the shots. Now, if it were an *important* senior photo, I would have used a lower f-stop and ISO. Do you think I should have kept it at 2 seconds?
These turned out fine because you actually had enough light. If they had been underexposed at all you would really have noticed the digital noise. Having the correct exposure makes a big difference.
You certainly do not want your subject to move. Had it been a child you would not want to use that slow shutter speed. Jessica could have handled it I am sure, as long as she is not a blinker.
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