Latest Portrait

Ruidoso Bill

Senior Member
Shot this yesterday in a park, model is my daughter-in-law. Few touch-ups and conversion to B&W in Lightroom 3, additional work done in Corel & Portrait pro. Shot with 18-200.

Beth.jpg
 
Last edited:

Joseph Bautsch

New member
Very good facial shot. What makes it good is the expression on the face, the smoothness of the skin, the position of the eyes so that the irises are defined by the whites, the tilt of the head, the framing of the face by the hair, and the background out of focus. All of this leaves no doubt about the subject with no distractions. And a very lovely subject helps a lot. Your write up indicates that this is a B&W? I'm not a B&W person so correct me if I'm wrong. There seems to be more color there than I would have expected from a B&W. For my taste the eyes have a little too much shadow. Just a little too dark. In any portrait it's the eyes that grab the most attention. They should be well defined and a little sharper than the rest of the face. I would also try to add a little more detail to the hair down the right side and across both shoulders. But hey I'm nitpicking and I'm looking at a small email jpeg that does not do a shot like this justice. An informal portrait doesn't need to be perfect to be good and you done good.
 

Browncoat

Senior Member
I think it's a great shot overall. The composition, pose, and lighting are all good. All the fundamentals are well represented.

I agree with Mr. Bautsch on a couple points: It appears as though you've used either soft focus or some sort of smoothing in post-processing. This is good for skin, but takes some of the sharpness away from the eyes, which should be the focal point as mentioned. On a positive note, the catchlight in the eyes is excellent! Second, I'm also seeing hints of color. This has more of a vintage look than a true B&W. It looks good and I like it, don't get me wrong. But if you're seeing this as B&W, your monitor may need calibrated.

Things I would fix: There are a couple stray hairs in her eyebrow. Those could be easily edited out. There is also a stray hair tucked into the corner of her mouth. Her dark hair and the lit side of her face are exposing quite a bit of facial fuzz that can also be smoothed out. Women really notice stuff like this when looking at photos of themselves.
 

Ruidoso Bill

Senior Member
I think it's a great shot overall. The composition, pose, and lighting are all good. All the fundamentals are well represented.

I agree with Mr. Bautsch on a couple points: It appears as though you've used either soft focus or some sort of smoothing in post-processing. This is good for skin, but takes some of the sharpness away from the eyes, which should be the focal point as mentioned. On a positive note, the catchlight in the eyes is excellent! Second, I'm also seeing hints of color. This has more of a vintage look than a true B&W. It looks good and I like it, don't get me wrong. But if you're seeing this as B&W, your monitor may need calibrated.

Things I would fix: There are a couple stray hairs in her eyebrow. Those could be easily edited out. There is also a stray hair tucked into the corner of her mouth. Her dark hair and the lit side of her face are exposing quite a bit of facial fuzz that can also be smoothed out. Women really notice stuff like this when looking at photos of themselves.

I'm not sure what b&w preset I ended up with, I will try some of your suggestions tonight, thanks for the comments.
 
In Portrait Professional 9.0 Studio Edition, I find that turning off the "sculpting" mode, and using it to focus strictly on the skin imperfections is what helps keep the eyes sharp. Perhaps you might want to try that route.
In looking at it closer, it looks more like a de-saturated (leaving a hint of color) image rather than a true black & white conversion.
 

Ruidoso Bill

Senior Member
In Portrait Professional 9.0 Studio Edition, I find that turning off the "sculpting" mode, and using it to focus strictly on the skin imperfections is what helps keep the eyes sharp. Perhaps you might want to try that route.
In looking at it closer, it looks more like a de-saturated (leaving a hint of color) image rather than a true black & white conversion.

I will give that a try, I really like what this program can do in such a short time. Thank you for the suggestion.
 
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