I See the Light in Your Eyes

[Katie]

 

Been playing with portraits recently. People are not necessarily my favorite but, I have three daughters…so, I probably should learn to photograph them!

This one caught my eye as soon as I took it. Setting, dim alleyway. ISO640 f11 1/6 55mm.  Taken with Nikon d5000 and Nikkor 55-200. I didn’t have a tripod so had to lean on a wall. Goal: a very nice close up portrait that just softly blurred the art wall behind her. Pleasantly surprised by catchlights.

top EDITED

bottom SOOC (now wondering if I like this more?)

[Peter Nowak]

Hello Katie, I’m not portrait photographer too.
It seems the sharpest part of portrait are her elbows. The sharpest should be eyes.
Edited version has a little bit strange skin tones. The SOOC version has better skin tones imho.
55 mm is too close I think. The elbows size seems much bigger when compared to head. Basic rule for portraits: head => 100+ mm,  half body => 50-80mm, whole body/group => 35-50 mm.

[Katie]

Thanks! My focus was a little all over the place in yesterday’s shoot. Was playing with AP mode and it changed my focus function and I had no idea what to do with it. Thanks so much for the MM suggestions for portraits. That will help a lot. I feel I’m always too close or too far away! Still working on light triangle and skin is, I’m learning, not very forgiving.

[Rob Wood (Admin)]

Yup, I probably would not have got quite this close. You have issues with the elbow size as PN mentioned and the eyes are slightly soft. Great model and I quite like the composition too though.  But ABSOLUTELY take the chance to shoot your daughters every time – you will improve in leaps and bounds and you only really get a cooperative model for a period of time before they get bored of it so take advantage!! I photograph my little boys a LOT and my portraiture is way better for it.

[Erik Fransman]

Hi Katie,

I do not agree that 55mm is too close. I actually do not know what that means. 55mm for a APSC sensor is a very nice focal length for portraits. But 1/6s and f/11 are off.
Why 1/6s? Very hard to keep it steady. And why f/11? Impossible to get a nice bokeh.

For a portrait like this, I would always try an aperture as wide as possible. (I have a 56mm f/1.2 lens and if possible, I try to use f/1.2. Or to make things easier for myself f/ 1.8 / f/2)
With f/1.2 yiu have a very shallow dof which means that you easily misfocus.

That’s the other thing, you have to focus on the eyes. If they are not in focus, the portrait usually does not work.

In post, with this image, I would blur the BG, sharpen the eyes (what is not in focus, you never get in focus), and use a vignette to make her the center of attention.
I do like the BG, but a 1×1 crop works as well.

Something like this. Version 1:

[Erik Fransman]

Version 2, 1×1 crop,

[Erik Fransman]

One more thing: your image is called I see the light in your eyes. Figuratively speaking I understand that. But in this image the eyes are just a tad too dark. Both for the title of the image as for the image anyway.
A tad light in her eyes.

[JasenkaG]

Hi Katie, I pretty much agree with the suggestions. I would reshoot this scene using different settings and maybe different focal length (just a bit wider).

[Dahlia Ambrose]

Hi Katie, that’s a lovely photo and your daughter has a beautiful smile. You could also try with a wider aperture value to bring more focus onto the model and slightly blur the bright distracting colours in the background.

[Falxy]

Katie your daughter is beautiful! 🙂

but jeez!!! you done your best to undo the natural progression.

tell me what you love in this image cus im confused.

 

 

massive bar crossing through her head with a little top knot above should maybe be a pointer towards another hobby……………….but its the st and we have to be positive/negative……..and the positive is that you posted here…….read or other up and come back and prove me wrong! 🙂

 

 

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