Outdoor portrait

[cichlid]

Hi All,

Been a while since I've posted. I just finished a 10 week basic photography class. Below is Maria taken while on our outdoor portraits class.



I've done some PP. I'm not completely satisfied with the frame, but .... that is what is is for now.
By the way, sorry for the jpg file. I think I will need to switch to Flickr.

Your C&C is welcomed and appreciated.

Thanks,

Erik

[rpcrowe]

Maria is an absolutely stunning young lady. On my monitor, the image would benefit from reduction in brightness to bring her skin tones in better. However, although I try to keep my monitor balanced, there are great differences in how monitors display images.

What bothers me though, is the extremely bright background directly to the rear of Maria and the cropping. The bright background attracts my eye away from Maria's face and her placement with a mass of foliage to her rear and very little in front of her also bothers me.

I consciously try to avoid a bright sky background, especially if I am not using fill flash. Using fill flash, I can sometimes balance the subject against a bright sky so that the sky doesn't overwhelm the subject. If you have used fill in this image, I suggest, either a stronger fill or placing your subject away from such a bright sky background.

I try to place my subject with a bit more area to her front than to her rear, unless I am consciously trying to show something in the behind her.

[cichlid]

Thanks Richard,

I tried what I could with the bright background in PP. Though, haven't worked with the software enough to find out how to adjust the clipped areas without affected the skin tones. We were also not working with flash during the assignment.

As for the composition, I tried to work with the rule of thirds. In your comments, are you suggesting that I should also have foliage in the foreground?

Erik

[Geoff F]

In my personal opinion, Erik, the first lesson would be to forget about the rule of thirds and work with what is available in the scene. Nature doesn't work with such forced and dogmatic rules.

I would crop away the right hand half of the image, which doesn't add anything but confusion, and turn it into a standard portrait with natural background.

You will probably need to work on a layer and mask to adjust the background brightness, particularly the area between the trees, but that is easy enough.

Then, I think, you will end up with an excellent photo of an attractive young lady.

[psdmagal]

http://www.flickr.com/photos/pedrosa...n/photostream/