April 2009 Photography Assignment - Portraits (human)

[Marko]

I really like this shot nomad and welcome!
In terms of comments - I like the pose here, the sharp eyes, yup - the separation of hair to background, the funky treatment... what I'm not crazy about is the hand which i find to be a distraction. Your play with the tones works with the look of this model but I'm finding parts of the image (the hand in particular, and part of the forehead) just a bit too red for my taste. Hope that helps and LOVE to see more shots from you.
Best - Marko

I shot this using one flash and softbox at camera left. The difficult part here was black hair on a black background without a hair or separation light. I was able to fix this by using the Shadow/Highlight feature in Photoshop. Then I adjusted the tone and colour using Curves. I would love to hear your thoughts and comments

[Greg_Nuspel]

This is more of a grab shot at the jazz jam today. I turned and saw them enjoying the music. Oliver is a great sax player, today he played Happy Birthday with such improvisation for one of the jammers it blew us away. This is his girlfriends daughter, just too cute.

[darkness]

Haven't been posted in a while and I want to join in on the fun.

[nomad358]

I really like this shot nomad and welcome!
In terms of comments - I like the pose here, the sharp eyes, yup - the separation of hair to background, the funky treatment... what I'm not crazy about is the hand which i find to be a distraction. Your play with the tones works with the look of this model but I'm finding parts of the image (the hand in particular, and part of the forehead) just a bit too red for my taste. Hope that helps and LOVE to see more shots from you.
Best - Marko

Thanks Marko!

I couldn't see it on my monitor, then when I checked on another monitor I can sure see the reds were quite over saturated. How about now?

[kat]

Looking good to me nomad!!!! Great photos everyone!

[Marko]

I Like your shot Greg - though it looks like it could benefit from a wee bit more contrast.
Darkness - Cool pose.
Nomad - much better on the hand

[darkness]

I really like your picture nomad. I have a question for you as well. How do you bring out such vibrant eyes? I try to do it but mine seem to turn out dark most of the time.

[nomad358]

Thanks everyone for your kind comments!

Darkness: If you're using a PC, here's one way: There is a trick I often use for bringing out the eyes a little more. It's very subtle, but it makes a great difference to a portrait. If you have Photoshop, zoom in to 100% view by pressing the CTRL and + keys together.
Select the Magic Wand tool and set the Tolerance to between 8-12. Now make the selection to the colour parts of both eyes by holding down the SHIFT key and clicking in the Iris area of the eyes until they are both selected. (You do not need to select the pupil.)(You can also use the lasso tool, but I find the Magic Wand to be faster) Next, goto IMAGE > ADJUSTMENTS > HUE/SATURATION. Goto to the Saturation slider and boost it to +20 or +25, then underneath that is the Lightness slider, boost that to +3 or +4. I wouldn't go over that amount because the eyes will start to look unnatural. After that, click OK and then click CTRL and D together to release the selection and then zoom out CTRL and - , to check the results. Hope it works for you! :-)

KAT: Your shot is awesome! Just wondering, why Manual Focus?

[Gem]

Yes! Finally managed to do one of these assignments! My friend had a bday dinner yesterday so I took the camera along in hopes of getting some usable shots.

Okay, considering this was taken in a darkened restaurant after sunset with just the pop-up flash on my canon s5, I'm just happy to get SOMETHING that's halfway decent

Birthday girl (lol).