As i begin to walk the path of portrait photography I really need some feedback which is really hard to find beside some "nice" "not bad" comments.
this shot was taken last sturday with a sweet actress and i was trying to get natural light with a fill of a speed light.
i would really love to have some feedback on it...
tnx alot
Sunny winter
It is a nice portrait and the DOF and bokeh is really nice, I don't like the blown out parts of her right shoulder and and the back of her hair and cap, and think you should have exposed for those highlights and let the flash compensate for the missing light on her face also the skin tones on her face seems a bit pale so perhaps correct the WB a bit upwards as well!
Christian has made very good and helpful comments, which I agree with but the point he makes about her face being a bit pale so correct the WB upwards, I don't follow or agree with. I think it must be a typo.
The shoulder, hat and hair are blown out (over exposed to the point where there is no detail) as he says. This is wrong. You should have darkened your ambient light exposure using; a smaller aperture, lower ISO, ND filter, or increased shutterspeed, or any combination of these adjustments, to the point where detail is captured in the brightest areas. Of course, this would darken everything including her face, perhaps, too much. Then use your flash to brighten the face to an attractive level, likely a bit darker than normal, as it would be in the shade of the sun, so to look more or less natural it would best not be fully exposed.
Now, about the face and the white balance. This is completely confused. What you need to do is to set the flash power or TTL compensation level, to get the most attractive amount of fill-in to replicate the brightness of soft shade. The white balance has nothing to do with this. Your white balance, colour by another name, looks about right to me, whereas her face is too pale, so less flash would be required if her face looked like this with the ambient adjustments made to give detai in the highlights. Shooting RAW would then allow for fine-tuning of the facial exposure to create the exact look wanted, in the edit. With an old fashioned auto exposure flash or a manual only studio type flash which does not work with your camera's TTL typically your flash should be set to provide the correct amount of light for a camera aperture about 2-3 stops wider than is actually used but with a more sophisticated flash that uses the camera's TTL metering I might try a 1/2 stop under compensation, in this case where her face is a significant proportion of the picture area, but then I would look at my image and adjust the compensation as required. If she was much smaller in the frame a different level of compensation would be needed, likely.
Rememeber the key is to start with an image that is correctly exposed for the ambient light, so the highlights are bright but detailed. Then adjust your flash, or reflectors, to fill-in as required. It is not difficult and I am sure with just a few tries you will get the hang of it and feel very confident. Using ND filters can allow you to use a wide aperture in bright light with a shutterspeed suitabe for use with flash. This allows the shallow depth of field you are likely going to want as in this image. Alternatively, if your flash and camera have a high speed sync mode you can use it to get the same result more easily.
That is a strong composition by the way and the shallow depth of field is working well