A few model shots from class this weekend

[jeffkohn]

I was one of 8 or 9 people who attended Juancho's (Xposure Photo) lighting class on Sunday. Some of the intro/background portion of the course was familiar territory for me as I've been reading up quite a bit on this stuff, but the class was definitely worthwhile because you can only get so much out of books; actually seeing the setups and getting some real shooting experience is the only way to truly learn this stuff I think.

My portrait experience before this consisted of a few portraits of my friend's baby and some portraits of my brother's family, so this was definitely a new experience for me. Here are a few shots from the hands-on portion of the class. (click on the picture to view the PBase page with shooting info)







I recalled one of the models mentioning some interest in B/W shots at one point so I tried a couple of B/W conversions:





There are a few more shots in the gallery here: http://www.pbase.com/jkohn/lighting_workshop
As always, comments and feedback welcome.

[Chris Lemoine]

They came out great Jeff!

[jeffkohn]

Thanks Chris, nice meeting you this weekend. Hope you got some keeper shots.

[Chris Lemoine]

I did get some keepers, although I really messed up my not having my camera setup correctly on our assignment shoot. The picture came out way to dark. Hopefully photoshop can save it.

It was nice meeting you as well.

Chris

[LoungeLizard]

These are nice...I'll process mine tonight.

[saroy]

I got a few keepers as well that I'll try to post later tonight. AND I finally discovered the true beauty of shooting RAW!! :lol: I had a shot of Jourdan (taken from the sliding board) that was underexposed, and I was able to save it.

Now saving things through RAW conversion isn't "learning lighting" but hey, I was happy.

[Jezebel]

the second girl converted to b&w soooooo beautifully. the contrast is perfect. i think that she posed a little awkward though, which is a shame. if she had a more natural stance it would really be something. :)

[saroy]

I should have mentioned in my earlier post -- my favorite of these that you posted is the first of Jourdan. I do love the colors and tones of the shot of Cathalina as well.

[jeffkohn]

the second girl converted to b&w soooooo beautifully. the contrast is perfect. i think that she posed a little awkward though, which is a shame. if she had a more natural stance it would really be something.

Thanks. For that shot I used the channel mixer for the B/W conversion, and also used a soft light layer to deepen some of the background tones.

Regarding the pose, I have to take responsibility for that in large part. Figuring out how to pose somebody, and then how to communicate that to them by directing them into the pose is a real challenge for me, definitely something I'll need to practice at. The B/W shot was actually supposed to just be a throw-away test shot for exposure, which is why she wasn't even looking at the camera. But when reviewing the images I found I actually liked that one better than the "real" shot (shown above in color). BTW there's also a color version of that B/W shot on my PBase page.

Thanks for looking,

[jeffkohn]

I got a few keepers as well that I'll try to post later tonight. AND I finally discovered the true beauty of shooting RAW!! I had a shot of Jourdan (taken from the sliding board) that was underexposed, and I was able to save it.

Yeah, RAW is definitely the way to go. I haven't shot JPEG in over a year, there are just SO many advantages to shooting RAW.

I should have mentioned in my earlier post -- my favorite of these that you posted is the first of Jourdan. I do love the colors and tones of the shot of Cathalina as well.

Thanks Sarah. The background color in that second shot wasn't as rich straight out of the camera but after playing around with it I liked the results.

[jeffkohn]

Based on some feedback in another forum I made a few tweaks: 1) lightened the skintones a bit in Jourdan's color shots; 2) Cooled the color balance of the skintones in Cathalina's color shots; and 3) increased the contrast a bit in Jourdan's B/W shot. The differences are fairly subtle but I think they're an improvement.

For some strange reason IE is refusing to update the cached version for the embedded images in this thread even after hitting F5 and restarting the browser (at least for me). So it may be necessary to click on each image to view the PBase version to see the differences. (You may also have to hit F5 to get the PBase verison to refresh)

[Sheldon]

I know Im starting to sound like a broken record, but I really love the B&W's........great job!

[Dennis_Benton]

Maybe its just me? These look so much better on pbase with the black background than they look on this forum. It would be nice to be able to select different color schemes on this forum.

[jeffkohn]

Originally Posted by Sheldon

I know Im starting to sound like a broken record, but I really love the B&W's........great job!

Thanks Sheldon. I agree there's something about B/W, it can convey a completely different mood from the same shot in color. I think both have their places though, in fact I often find myself flip-flopping between which I prefer depending on my mood.

Originally Posted by Dennis_Benton

Maybe its just me? These look so much better on pbase with the black background than they look on this forum. It would be nice to be able to select different color schemes on this forum.

Interesting. I agree with you for the color images dark color makes for a better background there. For the B/W images I think a white background/border actually works better. One way to have more control over this would be to post images with frames/borders around them but I just haven't gotten around to setting things up so that I could do that easily. Probably should though.