Corporate portraits

[ionian]

My boss is moving on to pastures new and asked me to take a couple of corporate portraits of him urgently for his new job. I only had a single manual flash and in hindsight I wish I had used some paper to diffuse the light a little, but I don't think it's a disaster to have harder shadows on a male portrait. Still, I offer these for comments knowing that they are no way near perfect:

[ccphoto]

More of a concern to me is he is wearing blue on blue on a green BG that is cluttered with bars of reflective white off the green. The B&W works better but you need to knock down the glare off his forehead and nose.

[Dave Humphries]

Yikes, that's a tough job Simon.

Urgent
In a less than ideal location
The sort of thing that only improves with practice

Am I correct in deducing that the key light was (harsh) sunlight through a window to his right (our/camera left) and that you have used flash to fill the shadows somewhat?

The harshness of the key light and the head positioning, combined with his facial features, have led to some unfortunate shadow and highlight areas. I think I'd dodge and burn this to improve (i.e. reduce) the contrast ratios.

In addition to the blue/green issue*, it also looks like there's some tungsten hitting the wall top left, which doesn't help - I wonder if that could be dealt with via a LR/ACR gradient filter to fix (I've not tried it).
* That said, it could have been worse

With the benefit of hindsight and the assumption of time and resources you probably didn't have, I might have perhaps taped a bit of thin flip chart paper to the window to diffuse the sunlight (assuming that's what it was) and switched off the tungsten lights.

I think the head tilt is just a tad over done in #1.

I hope those thoughts are helpful, Dave


Why not tell us what you'd do differently if someone else asks for similar tomorrow?


PS
I'll post some Chloe pictures for critique soon, so you can give me some 'hindsight'

[Shadowman]

In the color version that green cast makes the skin look sickly, a lot of loss detail in the eyes.

[ionian]

Thanks for the comments. I believe we learn as much if not more from our errors, and there are plenty to learn from here!

Dave - that's an excellent question, what would I do differently. I could, as I know you are aware, talk about the location or the lighting or other bits, but the truth is that in hindsight I would say "no" to taking the pictures. I'm capable of producing some decent pics but I'm inexperienced and I'm not at the level that I can just create a masterpiece portrait with minimal gear on the hoof. It's what separates the experienced Pro from the keen amateur, and I have a lot of learning left to enjoy.

Still, continued comments are welcome, and it would be helpful to ask yourselves honestly how you would have approached the gig with no notice and no set-up, id be interested to hear your thoughts on this.

[Shanghai Steve]

Yes, that background kills the shot. If there was no decent background available, I'd have been tempted to place the subject as far as possible from a neutral wall and shoot close with a reasonably large aperture to have a soft background. I don't know about the corporate culture you/he is working in but his clothes seem far from professional; ill-fitting, open jacket while standing, blousy shirt with no tie. I'd have grabbed a tie and/or smartened up the shirt with a few clips holding it tight at the back, buttoned up the jacket and done the same with it and asked him to straighten his head! He look like a lounge singer just come off-stage.
Alternatively, you could have shot him sitting at a desk. If there was a window directly behind his desk, you could have moved it so there was natural light on the subject.

[Dave Humphries]

There you go, I have already learnt from this thread (thanks Steve) - while that apparel looks perfectly natural as (kinda) smart casual for work (in UK), Steve is correct, there's much that could/should have been done to his clothing too, in terms of being a 'professional level' corporate shot he might want to use.

I guess the benefit of a 'corporate shoot' for a company is that someone (his PA) might be keeping an eye open for 'clothing issues' for him, but under the circumstances (him leaving), that wasn't going to happen, so it fell to you.

There's no way I'd have been able to cope with this aspect during the shoot either, at my current stage of development - and I think we're at a roughly similar level overall. I honestly think I would have avoided using the harsh sunlight as key though. Finding a suitable background, without prep (e.g. some bg paper), leaves all of us at the mercy of whatever architectural features are available within a building and I suspect that, apart from the sunshine, I might have chosen a similar place, given that it is pastel coloured (as I said, that could have been worse) and was distant enough to be thrown out of focus.

the truth is that in hindsight I would say "no" to taking the pictures

I was asked to assist an ex-colleague shoot another ex-colleagues wedding (over a year ago) and I said 'no' to that, it is difficult, not wanting to let friends down, but I'm so glad I did, I know way more now than I did then and I'd have been little help as a second shooter in reality. Now I'd be tempted, if asked again, but I think your experience shows how hard it can be. I understand - the problem is the subjects often don't - and will resort (at worst) to a friend shooting them with their mobile phone.

I have agreed to shoot one of my daughter's friends babies, based on my most recent shoot (which I have yet to post here), but that was strictly on the understanding that the Mum (and Rebecca) look after getting the best from the subject, leaving me to struggle with the shooting aspects
This on a practice/favour basis only.
Although I'm now thinking that I should probably issue some clothing advice ahead of the meet/shoot to hopefully avoid some potential disasters

Cheers, Dave

PS I hope your subject doesn't follow you on CiC

[ionian]

The clothing issue made me laugh - not because Steve is wrong, but I work in the liberal arts and so wearing a jacket of any description is almost the equivalent of dressing in tails

Useful info coming, and believe it or not I actually feel better for realising how much more I have to learn (or at least how much more I need to actually learn to implement, as opposed to just reading about).

[Shanghai Steve]

I am glad my comments didn't cause offense. One never knows for sure where anyone else is coming from. I've even seen threads on other forums that read "Got a really formal wedding coming up: Wrangler or Levi's?"
Dave, I also refused a job due to my awareness of my limitations. I was asked to do a wedding, to be the Principle (well, only) photographer for a very nice Canadian couple. They even offered to pay my airfare to get to Vancouver from China to do the shoot. And I only had a Nikon D5100 and one prime lens! I said no, but then when I saw the photographs that had been taken, I wished I'd been there.
Photography is like any technical art. The more experienced one gets the more one learns to see in an image. Having the chance to look intensively at someone else's work is also distinctly different from doing the job oneself, with all the distractions and considerations of the day from "Why is my ISO at 6,400!!" to "What am I having for dinner tonight?" Keeping things light and informal whilst calculating all the variables for a specific outcome is another skill. One which I have not really had to learn. I remember taking 40 headshots of my kids to decorate the classroom with....and only after gettting them all printed did I realise I had missed something which would have made them far nicer.

[IzzieK]

Simon, I do not like his head posed like that...if you do not mind going to Creative Live look for Roberto Valenzuela in the search and go to Location, Posing, and execution. Click on that and it will show you a video with the word 40 and an arrow. Click the arrow and you will see a highlighted title called Posing Anchor Points. It is a 23+ minute video that teaches how to pose male/female and how to pose men's head and what works...I am sure you will learn something there from that one part alone. Like others I do not like the green background. Perhaps you can do your correction first then use the Quick Selection tool, select your boss and change the background to black or something via the Hue and Saturation slider? Just a suggestion...or two.