Headshot of my wife (strobist)

[BEphoto]

finally had some time today after our strobist meetup to shoot with my new kit. Armed with two days of workshops and learning from this weekend, i made my wife sit for me for a little bit so i could play around with my setup. This was one of the better images i got, but there are about 20 more that i havent even opened, which i know there are some winners in there too. That will have to wait till tomorrow.

How did i do? I know there is a splotchy spot on the upper right side of her forehead, but everything i did in PS made it look obviously retouched. I tried just grabbing with the patch tool, healing brush, clone tool set to darken, lasso select and play with midtones in levels, all of that junk. I think the bane of that image is that i didnt really see that spot until i was almost done and should have probably worked it out before softning/hi pass and all of that good stuff. I may go back and rework the original RAW file again to see if i can get a better result, then just layer the fixed one and this one and blend that spot in, IF i can fix it that is.

Anyway, thats my one major beef with the image, but other than that, i like it quite a bit. C&C away my friends, just dont be too mean! Its my first REAL shot at making something good out of my kit.

[photojournalist]

It looks good. Her pupil is a bit too big. You need more ambient light to make it smaller. Also, a rim light might give your pic a little more kick.

[BEphoto]

Originally Posted by photojournalist

It looks good. Her pupil is a bit too big. You need more ambient light to make it smaller. Also, a rim light might give your pic a little more kick.

I don't yet have another trigger for the third light, so I just had to work with two here. I agree that a rim light could have made this much better. Hopefully my trigger shows up this week so I can have all 3 of my lights going.

Also, I never even considered the pupil size. I'm glad you pointed that out so next time I'll know to watch for that. We shot with most of the lights off because she kept getting a weird second catchlight from a bulb in the kitchen.

[photonewb]

try a small maglight flashlight. It'll give the subjects eyes some light so they shrink, but it won't kill you, especially if you hold it up right next to your camera....or even if you got someone to stand close to the flash and do it

[doctahjones]

Originally Posted by BEphoto

I don't yet have another trigger for the third light, so I just had to work with two here. I agree that a rim light could have made this much better. Hopefully my trigger shows up this week so I can have all 3 of my lights going.

Also, I never even considered the pupil size. I'm glad you pointed that out so next time I'll know to watch for that. We shot with most of the lights off because she kept getting a weird second catchlight from a bulb in the kitchen.

if you're doing a 'studio' type setup, i use either a 15w flourescent or a 100w incandecent to get smaller pupils. as long as you're shooting over 1/100 f/5.6 then you shouldn't see the light at all.

doctahjones added 1 Minutes and 12 Seconds later...Double Post Merged Below

oh, and other than that, i like the picture, although i wish the crop was just a little wider at the top and right side.

[Robin Binder]

I love it. Nice job on the composition and the eyes look good to me. Great detail.

[texxter]

Brad, good job with the lighting, looks nice. On suggestion to consider - it seems that the "space" in front of the subject is missing and your wife's face seems to be touching the invisible "surface" of the frame, as it seems so close to the camera. I think this is caused by the omission of the shoulder closest to the camera. In a headshot I like to see space around the model's face, even if the top of the head intersects the frame. I am sorry I am not explaining this too well!

Nice work!

[Peacock]

So...what kit are you using?

[d3sparks]

How did i do? I know there is a splotchy spot on the upper right side of her forehead, but everything i did in PS made it look obviously retouched. I tried just grabbing with the patch tool, healing brush, clone tool set to darken, lasso select and play with midtones in levels, all of that junk. I think the bane of that image is that i didnt really see that spot until i was almost done and should have probably worked it out before softning/hi pass and all of that good stuff. I may go back and rework the original RAW file again to see if i can get a better result, then just layer the fixed one and this one and blend that spot in, IF i can fix it that is.

Brad, I like the composition - nice shot.

I know this is the wrong forum, but....

One quick method I would use to address the spot that bothers you is to (1) create a new layer and set the blend mode to lighter, use the eyedropper tool and sample the skin color you want to use, use the paint brush to paint the color over the spot and lighten it up, (2) adjust the opacity of this layer to blend the colors a bit, and (3) if you want to bring out some of the original texture duplicate the background and drag it to the top, set its blend mode to overlay, and use a high pass filter with a small radius (typically less than 1) to bring back the skin texture. I did a very quick edit using this method...

[BEphoto]

wow! very nicely done. thanks a lot for that quick tip!

[ldelacruz]

Great job, Brad! You did very well. I hate to disagree with the others but I am a big fan of tight crops. Keep practicing.

Don,
That was a good fix!

[BEphoto]

Originally Posted by ldelacruz

Great job, Brad! You did very well. I hate to disagree with the others but I am a big fan of tight crops. Keep practicing.

Don,
That was a good fix!

thats a lot lonnie. Im the same way about crops (obviously). I was mainly doing it so tight to try and get a more narrow depth of field around the eyes. I probably should have stopped down maybe another 1/3 to get the eye to camera left sharper though.