A few portraits

[BernardLanguillier]

Hello my friends,

I know most of you probably see me as some stitching landscape addict, but I got the opportunity to capture some portrait images of pianist friends this past weekend. They were aware I was outside my comfort zone, but decided to take the risk anyway.

I would love to get comments from our portrait/sudio experts about these:



/Updated version/


/Updated version/


Cheers,
Bernard

[ynp]

Love the second one.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

[GrahamBy]

Personal tastes and all... but I find the 1st and 3rd a little over-lit, so there's not much modeling of the shapes of the face, and the woman's arm is distractingly bright.

In fact my preferred shot of the woman is the reflection in the piano lid in the second shot, because of the lower over-all and less direct lighting. The man is a little too dark in the reflection but better in the direct image... still a little burnt out on the side.

Were you using the theatre lights, or flash?

[RSL]

I agree with Graham. And the rim light in #1 isn't well done. Those chunks of hair that have popped up into the light just don't work. #2 is excellent.

[Slobodan Blagojevic]

Too frontal (#1 and #3), too bright, too direct (vs. diffused).

[Eric Myrvaagnes]

The second one is very nice.

I look forward to your ventures into stitched photos of pianists playing Chopin.   

Cheers,

Eric

[Rob C]

Too much DOF, Bernard. It's a different genre where you can relax and let it go... everybody already knows what a piano is.

;-)

Rob C

[RSL]

Missed that one. Rob's the pro.

[MattBurt]

Agreed on too much DPF and too much/too harsh light. They aren't bad but could be much better with some small adjustments.

[BernardLanguillier]

Thank you very much for your inputs my friends.

- this was shot in mixed lights with the tunsten lights of the studio and gel corrected Profoto B1/D1 lights,
- I used a mix of softboxes and beauty dish depending on the shot (all those shown here are probably with softboxes though). I got rid of the beauty dish and positioned the ligts more centrally to avoid some shadows projected by hair on the side of her face
- the first and third are with the 28mm and yes I should have opened up a bit more instead of staying at f5.6

I realize that this was a bit much to manage alone: new venue with very little info available ahead of time, one of my first location sessions (the first one with multiple lights and the first one in mixed lighting), some recent pieces of equipment (color meter, new 28mm lens), a new subject (2 people - one with glasses - with a highly reflective piano),..

I probably had too high a CPU pourcentage busy dealing with tech issues and not enough focused on planning/tenung of light positions, critical images review.

Fortunately many of the points raised can probably be adressed in post and it tells me I have to do a long overdue screen recalibration!

I have reworked a bit the second and third, is that closer to what you had in mind?

Cheers,
Bernard