Figure in a landscape / portrait

[Chairman Bill]

I usually just shoot landscapes, with the occasional family snapshot added in. More recently I've been working on something more properly 'portrait'. The first shot here is of my youngest son, as part of a landscape, but I quickly realised the portrait opportunity here, so took it. I'm quite pleased with the result, but protraiture is not something I've done a lot of, so comments & advice welcome

[attachment=21444:Alex_2.jpg][attachment=21445:Alex.jpg]

[fredjeang]

Hi bill,

For me the first pic works just fine.

What I do miss in the second one is more room on the left, because your son is watching on the left (direction) and currently in the center.
I think that if you displace a little bit the son's position to the right, you'll gain more space on the left, where he is looking.

Regards,

Fred.

[Chairman Bill]

OK, thanks for that. I'd cropped to exclude a piece of bramble that crept into the left edge, but a bit of jiggery-pokery with the repair tool in Aperture, et voila! So now I've given a bit more room on the left, so hopefully it works a little better.

[attachment=21452:Alex_3.jpg]

[fredjeang]

Definitely better. How does Russ say ? : "right on the buck"? or something like that, can't remember.
Well done.

Cheers.

[RSL]

Bill, I agree with Fred except I'm wondering why you were cropping instead of framing on the camera. That's a very good kid shot. Right on the money (except for the cropping). One thing I'd do though is bring up his eyes a bit. I did this one with Viveza 2 but you can do it with the dodge tool also. I may have brought them up a bit too much. The end product is yours, of course, based on your own decisions.

[attachment=21455:Alex_3_2.jpg]

[Chairman Bill]

What you did to the eyes certainly works! As for my cropping, I was using a 18-35mm, couldn't get any closer really, so always had in mind a little post-capture cropping. Having a 50mm with me might have been a good idea!

[fredjeang]

Bill, I agree with Fred except I'm wondering why you were cropping instead of framing on the camera. That's a very good kid shot. Right on the money (except for the cropping). One thing I'd do though is bring up his eyes a bit. I did this one with Viveza 2 but you can do it with the dodge tool also. I may have brought them up a bit too much. The end product is yours, of course, based on your own decisions.

[attachment=21455:Alex_3_2.jpg]

Well done the eyes.
A question: I'm wondering if the same result could have been acheived with effex pro and the control point?
What is the strengh of Viveza?

[RSL]

Well done the eyes.
A question: I'm wondering if the same result could have been acheived with effex pro and the control point?
What is the strengh of Viveza?

Fred, Viveza 2 is what I used. I dropped a control point into the dark area around the right eye, adjusted the radius to cover both eyes, and increased the brightness a notch. With the improvements in the dodge tool in CS4 you could do pretty much the same thing with the dodge tool, but Viveza is a bit more precise and certainly easier to use. When you say "efex pro" I'm not sure to which plugin you're referring. With a grayscale file you can't go back into Silver Efex Pro, though I didn't check to see if the RGB channels were still there. I'm not sure what Color Efex pro would do for you in this case.

[RSL]

What you did to the eyes certainly works! As for my cropping, I was using a 18-35mm, couldn't get any closer really, so always had in mind a little post-capture cropping. Having a 50mm with me might have been a good idea!

Well, sometimes you just can't avoid cropping, though I always avoid it as much as possible. My only concern about the cropping is that when I brought the picture into Photoshop and expanded it to fill the display, the picture was pixelated. It'll be fine as long as you don't try to print it in too large a format.

[tokengirl]

I usually just shoot landscapes, with the occasional family snapshot added in. More recently I've been working on something more properly 'portrait'. The first shot here is of my youngest son, as part of a landscape, but I quickly realised the portrait opportunity here, so took it. I'm quite pleased with the result, but protraiture is not something I've done a lot of, so comments & advice welcome

[attachment=21444:Alex_2.jpg][attachment=21445:Alex.jpg]

I like them very much.  My only observation is that they look too "smooth" for my taste, but I am a big fan of grain in B&W.

[John R]

I like them very much.  My only observation is that they look too "smooth" for my taste, but I am a big fan of grain in B&W.

The image has a dramatic quality with the natural light and extreme closeup. There may have been less distortion with a 50mm, but the extreme close up is powerful and forces the distortion into the background. Lovely image.

JMR

[RSL]

The image has a dramatic quality with the natural light and extreme closeup. There may have been less distortion with a 50mm, but the extreme close up is powerful and forces the distortion into the background. Lovely image.

JMR

John, He cropped -- from the looks of the photograph, he cropped quite a bit. The only thing that affects the perspective you're talking about is distance from the subject. Had he used a 50mm or longer lens in order to avoid cropping, the picture would have looked exactly the same. If you doubt this, shoot something with a 70mm lens, then shoot it again from the same point with a 24mm lens. On your computer, crop the 24mm shot to the same dimensions as the 70mm shot. You'll see what I mean.

[Chairman Bill]

I didn't crop that much at all. The first photo was taken as a landscape (18mm) & the second as a portrait (35mm). The second one isn't cropped from the first.

[RSL]

Bill, Probably what I'm seeing in the pixelated image is the change you made in order to post it on here. Since you were shooting with a D700 and a 35mm lens, and you didn't do much cropping, that has to be what I'm seeing The dimensions of the image on the web are 1024 x 683 at 72ppi. Even though, as you say, you converted the vertical into a horizontal, if my arithmetic's right, and if you didn't change the width of the converted image, you must have ended up with around a 6 megapixel result. That's plenty.

But that doesn't change the situation as far as perspective is concerned. On the other hand, I agree with John: it's a very good image. Good-looking kid too. I should know. I have four of those.

[JimmyXue]

OK, thanks for that. I'd cropped to exclude a piece of bramble that crept into the left edge, but a bit of jiggery-pokery with the repair tool in Aperture, et voila! So now I've given a bit more room on the left, so hopefully it works a little better.

[attachment=21452:Alex_3.jpg]

To me the shoe looks distracting. When I look at the picture, I first stare at his face, then immiedately I look at his shoe. I think it's the bright white strap.