April 2012 Portraits

[Jay DeFehr]

Hey no worries buddy. Obviously there are feelings that you have looking at a picture that are not easy to translate.

Thanks for understanding, and taking my comments in the spirit they were intended.

Definitely i hope i can take portraits like Jay's one you posted as an example.

Don't we all! though I do permit myself the nitpick of wishing both eyes were in focus.

[jessicadittmer]

A portrait of Luther Gerlach during European collodion week-end.
more portraits here:
http://medusaphotographie.blogspot.f...portraits.html

Attachment 72526

LOVELY! Collodion is a goal someday for me...always love them, great work! Enjoyed the blog too!

[Luke79]

Great works shown in this thread , enjoying them all and really inspiring

[jp]

My first LF portrait. Feel free to criticize and/or advise

Chamonix 45 and Caltar 210mm. Ilford fp4+

I think your scan is a bit off as for the technical aspect of it. Your shadows start at the far left of the curve and that's usually for things that are actually black in a photo. So you've clipped the shadows a little. You've also got the highlights a little bit dim. The x173 position on my curves graph shows her left cheek. If you scanned it not so dim, you could have gotten a little more contrast out of the highlights. You usually want the distribution of light and dark in the scan to mostly fill the x axis of the curves graph, with a tiny bit of elbow room on both sides. You've got no room on the left, and lots of space on the right.

You could warm her up and try relaxing poses with a digital camera or smaller camera till you both "get into it" then use the LF which would be all setup and almost ready to go.

[Graham06]

Gorgeous!

Click on the "Me on Flickr" link. There's another of Lilith and more worth the visit.

[SergeiR]

Sergei i'm correct understanding that i could have raised the camera to her hair level and bent it forward?

only if you want to play with focal plane effect. Otherwise you don't need to use tilt. Swing - yes, a bit, if your subject is not deadly peering into camera (which is another common mistake in portraits - people look better when their face turned slightly). Basically classic portrait is always shot / painted like that - from eye level or slightly higher (but not much, otherwise you give them this little kid look "i am smaller than you , you win"). This assures that head is main subject in shot and shoulders and body - moved away and appear smaller (except for male poses, and for full body poses, but it is different kettle of fish, of course)

Anyway - this is whole other thing, on top of handling LF is how to light portraits and how to pose people. There are dozens of very good books written on subject. I personally recommend to look for Mortensen's "Model". It beats anything that i read so far on this particular subject on "how to pose" (or you can look for Zucker's book, not superb, but ok). But it is for more "classic" feel. Modern theories are a bit different specially when it comes to glamour & etc.. but there are some decent books too.

[Myxine]

I think your scan is a bit off as for the technical aspect of it. Your shadows start at the far left of the curve and that's usually for things that are actually black in a photo. So you've clipped the shadows a little. You've also got the highlights a little bit dim. The x173 position on my curves graph shows her left cheek. If you scanned it not so dim, you could have gotten a little more contrast out of the highlights. You usually want the distribution of light and dark in the scan to mostly fill the x axis of the curves graph, with a tiny bit of elbow room on both sides. You've got no room on the left, and lots of space on the right.

You could warm her up and try relaxing poses with a digital camera or smaller camera till you both "get into it" then use the LF which would be all setup and almost ready to go.

Jp498,
Thanks a lot for your post and the time you took to look at my picture. Indeed, i think my scanning was inappropriate: either my scanner (an old perfection 2450) isn't powerful enough, or (more likely) i can't use it properly. I use vuescan and you're right, the darks were nearly clipped while the highlights were more on the average grey side. Looking at my neg, it seems that skin tones are more distributed from highlights to shadows.
The idea of warming up with my digital seems a great idea. Let alone that when i'll use strobes, i can find the right exposure...

Sergei,
Thanks again. Those post really help. I'm looking for those books and another friend whose portrait i can butcher ah ah!

[Frank Petronio]

Fine portrait but you could hit the hot spot on his nose and maybe even Liquify it to be a little smaller!

[Ramiro Elena]

True, I really like the light, pose and depth of field. The hot spot in the nose bothered me from the start. Really easy to soften it by the way (PS).

[polyglot]

Myxine: in Vuescan, set it in Advanced mode and press ctrl-2 to get the contrast-adjustment histogram. Drag the whitepoint slider so that it just nearly touches the highlights; likewise with the black point slider and shadows. That will get you a good start and at least avoid the no-highlights problem in your posted portrait. You can also drag the Brightness slider downwards to get more highlight-contrast at the cost of
lower midtones; it's a similar effect to printing a bit darker.

Note that if you have a lot of dynamic range in the scene, you will need to clip some of it off or the print will be flat: negs hold much more range than prints.