My first portrait

[Lee Christopher]

It was a blast of a session! But I was running around making sure everything was OK (I organized the session for a few other lf beginners) and was beat.

I wanted to shoot with a different perspective, and at the same time, try out my B+W soft focus filter (said to be similar to a softar) as well as using selective focus to obliterate the modern cityscape in the further background, but I'm getting funky effects further out in the defocused areas. Is there any way I can avoid this? I would imagine the use of the filter and movements being restricted if the funky background is due to the light acting strangely after hitting the 'micro' lenses on the filter.

Other than that, I made several embarrassing errors including unbalanced framing and forgetting that I would get more distortion at the edge when shooting with an ultra-wide.





Have to be a bit more careful with the way I wind film on a 6x12 back ...

CHEERS!

[Lee Christopher]

Not sure why the first photo didn't load load. Trying again ...




Please be gently brutal with your critique. LOL!

[lenser]

Lee,

I'll try for an explanation, but you'll get no criticism from me. For a first effort.....WOW!!! This is lovely and exciting.

Two things seem to be going on in the far right background. One is the normal out of focus fall off that would happen with limited depth of field or swings set to create a different plane of focus. In large format, this will show up more than smaller formats and seem to be exagerated compared to what you may be used to. For me it works very well in this image.

I'm betting the "funky" stuff is where the leaves and blades of the plants may actually be moving with the wind which would possibly cause multiple layers of image to form with a slow shutter speed. It could also be due to the "layering" of multiple plants with light coming through the vegetation. Do you recall if this was a windy day or what speed you were using at the time?

As I said, for me this works. If you don't like it, a combination of swings to get the background in focus, and a faster shutter speed (if possible) to stop any such blowing motion would be my choices. To my eyes, this does not look like any artifact from light refracting or reflecting from a filter.

The only thing I would do differently on a personal basis is to burn in the foreground grave stone and the whole background region to slightly darker than the young lady's facial tones....or to dodge them to a brighter tone so that her face has less of a matching tone than the rest of the field. Remember the ancient rule of composition (especially portraiture), that "the eye goes to the point of greatest contrast", whether that it the brightest or the darkest area of a print. You've already got her face as the point of focus. That slight tonality change would really zoom attention right to her.

Congratulations. Very nice work.

Tim

[Lee Christopher]

Thank you Tim, for the compliments as well as (more importantly) your observations.

It was a pleasant day with gentle breeze at times, but by the time the others had finished shooting, it was a bit overcast and gloomy and perhaps the breeze had kicked up half a notch or so. I was rushing and completely forgot about my reflector~! DUH!

Another embarrassing part was that all day I was telling the others to scout backgrounds and angles, then pre-visualize their pictures, do a rough composition with an assistant before calling in the model and so on, and by the time it came to me, I hadn't the foggiest idea what shot I wanted, and also something the others had not already done ... so I winged it. It was quite an un-nerving feeling.

I'm still not sure whether the filter had anything to do with the funky background. Next time I'm going to shoot one with and one without. But on the whole, I was quite pleasantly surprised how the filter worked. I never had pleasing results with this filter on a 35mm format before.

Anyway, I yabber too much.

Portrait #1 redone.

I tried another version with her face and upper chest slightly lighter, but it looked a little over the top.

Oh, I forgot, shutter speed was slowish around 1/15 - 1/30.

[Rick Olson]

Hello Lee,

Short and sweet ... These are very nice! Looking forward to seeing more of your work. I like the "over the top" image above. I'll take daring over the expected any time.


Rick

[lenser]

Lee,

This is beautiful no matter how you look at it. I do like the darker form, but that's just my own personal taste. It does seem to me that more attention goes to her face now.

It's been years since I owned a B&W soft focus filter and I'm trying to remember if it has little raised dots, or concentric circles, or just how it is configured. If it does have some sort of raised or dimpled surface, like the Hasselblad Softars, it is certainly conceivable that some of the background pattern could have been influenced by the filter.

Back in my portrait days with an RB67 and the wonderful Mamiya 180mm lens, outdoor portraits often produced light traps between leaves that were very bold, out of focus white blobs that were a huge distraction. At one of the tons of seminars I attended, some creative genius mentioned using a strip of black electrical tape across a UV filter and cutting it into a thin jagged, lightning bolt pattern to break up the blob effect. Worked brilliantly and gave a result not totally unlike what you have happening here.

If this turns out to be the B&W filter causing this artifact, you might try some of the old fashioned soft focus filters that many of us used to make.

Here's my personal list:

Two UV filters with dark pantyhose material or black nylon toulle (netting) stretched tight in between. One layer...slightly soft. Two are more so. Three is about the limit.

(One layer of the netting is only a bout 1/2 stop reduction, 2 is about one stop, and three is nearly 2 stops, so make exposure allowances.)

If you are shooting high key, use white toulle netting in place of the black so the fabric pattern wont show against the white background.

Same between cardboard frames like the old Calumet filter frames for a drop in shade like the Lindahls.

Same as all above, but with a few small holes burned through the fabric by a lit cigarette (for the hole diameter). This allows some very sharp focused rays to pass through the holes while the rest of the field is softer, a layering of soft over sharp for another effect.

UV filter with Vaseline around the outer third perimeter, clear center. This almost creates a Petzval type of Bokah effect with a sharp center, except that the swirl overlays all focus planes that it overlays instead of being related to depth of field.

UV filter with dots, concentric circles or a continuous spiral (all widely spaced) of clear model airplane glue on the surface.

Each of these give different results and all are successful soft focus modifiers, especially for close up to mid length portraits.

It's fun and very cheap to make these compared to buying very expensive SF filters.

Great image. Please show us more.

Tim

[Lee Christopher]

Thanks for your kind world Rick! I donlt have many to show yet. This was my first portrait session on LF and I only shot 3 angles. This appears to be the only one that really worked. I'll be honest - I was actually tempted not to shoot at all on that day.

WOW Tim, some of those sound really exciting!

The suggestion of a strip of black electrical tape sounds like something that would come in very handy! Thanks for sharing that Tim!

The tulle and ciggy burnt fabric sounds like something I haven't tried yet. Tulle in a normal tone shot could also add a 'fog' effect perhaps?

The Soft filter I used had little mini lenses all over them. I believe it was a B+W re-creation of the Zeiss softars (or so I vaguely remembered), and not the concentric rings like the Duto filters. I've had this particular filter for over 20 years now, so in effect I had to pay nothing to try it all over again!

ARRRGH! I see that I missed an Imagon in the classifieds!

I'm sorry, I forgot to add, Tim, coming from someone of your background, you have no idea how much your comments mean to me. Thank you for your encouragement.

[lenser]

That's definitely the same as the Hasse softars and they are great.

I've never thought of using the tulle for a fog effect. I suspect either the white or another light tone out of doors would have a better chance than a darker tone due to scattering reflected light across the netting. Definitely try it without a shade. Light coming in from about 90 degrees would likely have the most effect...maybe too much, but that's for experimentation.

Playing with this stuff and coming up with seat of the pants engineering has always been a huge part of the fun whether in portraiture or commercial projects. By the way, almost all of those ideas came from some of the dozens of mentors I've had the great good fortune to meet. Pay it forward!!!!!