fore/aft critique please?

[yobenny]

I shot this a week after getting this camera and finished it in photoshop, looking at these numbers I would have shot this differently today but I imagine it was on auto when I took this. CiC please!

Device: Nikon D3200
Lens: VR 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6G
Focal Length: 44mm
Focus Mode: Manual
AF-Area Mode: Single
VR: ON
AF Fine Tune:
Exposure
Aperture: f/5.3
Shutter Speed: 1/40s

[yobenny]

My waycom bamboo just came in sitting here in the box I am so excited!

[tybrad]

Benny,
I prefer the contrast bump in the aft best. The background is too busy for me and the cutoff lamp distracts. Try to not have the background so close in portraits unless they are compositionally integral.

Nice rendering of a lovely lady.

[yobenny]

I do clearly remember being humbled by this camera when I tried to take those pics. Not understanding how it works, frame, talk to mary, light, angle, distance, it's sure isnt as easy as people think.

[John Morton]

Benny, my Internet computer isn't color calibrated (note to self: kick myself) so I can't say for sure but it looks to me that the color tone is a little bit yellow - maybe, an incandescent light off to the right (of Mary - that's our left)?

The best skin tone, to me, seems to be on her left arm (our right side as viewers). I zoomed in on the image, and in the highlights of her eyes I think I see at least two, and possibly as many as four, places that are contributing light to the image. It is a beautiful photograph, and your post processing is wonderful, but I think you are fighting with too many different light sources here and maybe that is the one thing you might want to keep in mind for future portraits.

[rpcrowe]

I like number two the best. I agree that the skin "might" be a bit on the yellow side but, it doesn't distract me. I have become dependent on using a WhiBal reference card to establish color balance. However, after the WhiBal gets me within the ballpark, I will often tweak the results until I find one that I really like. This would necessarily need a monitor which is calibrated...

http://www.whibalhost.com/_Tutorials/WhiBal/01/

The background is kind of busy but, it looks like you shot wide open with your lens and could not change the BG without having changed the model's or camera's position. Being cognizent of the BG when shooting will often save post production editing time and energy...

In PP, both Photoshop and Photoshop Elements have ways to blur the background to look like selective DOF was used...

PSE:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VE39T-CxzNQ

PS CS6
http://www.dpreview.com/articles/440...llery-tutorial