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Tomasz Krzysztofik's picture

Roksana

Hello everyone .

I am new in this grup and this is my first post .

Roksana , the girl in this photo is VERY happy with this image , buy I am curious what do you think guys about this portret . More professional eye .

What can I say more , retouching was done to keep maximum the facial features .

I am waiting for yours criticism. ;)

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3 Comments

I think that basically it is good but the lighting on her face is too dramatic, for me. The facial highlights are too bright and perhaps the darker areas are too dark but that would depend how much you tone down the highlights. Did you use fairly small light sources or have you done too much dodging of the highlights and burning of the shaddow areas, dodgng mainly I suspect? I also think you have over cooked the eyes, which seem too contrasty to be real. Most people don't have such white whites and so these look Photoshopped, to me.

The background colour and the sweater harmonise with her eye colour, so that's good. Her sweater colour and texture works with her hair colour. I would photoshop-out the bra strap, or whatever it is.

Personally I don't think the 35mm format works well upright, it is too narrow, almost imprisoning the subject. So the way I suggest adding width is to either step back 12 inches or use a slightly wider lens, then crop off the top & bottom, a bit. So how to choose whether to step back or use a wider lens. Moving further away changes the perspective, making the image very slightly flatter/compressed. Whereas staying at the same distance but using a shorter focall length lens does not change the perspective. This is really imprtant in getting the feel you want in a portrait and many people think changing the lens changes the perspective, which is incorrect. Why do they think this? Glad you asked. It happens because when people change lens they then tend to move in or away, depending on if they have gone wider or longer. If you use a zoom lens it is easy to go wider or longer by a very small amount and this helps maintain quality, compared to changing from an 85mm prime lens to a 50mm prime lens, which would need a good bit of cropping to get the smame framing. In your image I would not want to loose any of the hight of the image but want more width. Also I think that after the highlights are moderated her face would look less severe/dramatic so would likely not want to flatten the perspective, or at least not by much, so using a slightly wider lens from more or less the same point of view would be my choice.

The biggest thing for me is the highlights on her face, need easing back and her eyes need less wow factor, then she will look great. Good attempt.

She likes it because her skin glows and eyes sparkle. So lighting and post may not be the best, but the client is still happy.

It's great when people love our photos, but as photographers, we look at photos in a whole different way. We critique the lighting, pose, angle, lens used, crop, etc. So if you ask, "Is this a nice photo, I'd say, yes." But if you want a professional critique so you can improve and become even better, I think Ian McCann gave amazing feedback which is so helpful to all of us!