Portrait shoot - C&C Welcome

I think you have to lose the jewels, they are distracting. Apart from that maybe a bit more detail on the hair. It is easy to criticise but these are really fine photo's. Nothing is perfect though.

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Originally Posted by GiacomoD

I agree with Manfred about the need to set black and white point, but in my opinion his setting was a bit too aggressive, especially on the white side. I would prefer a softer approach, as in the image below.

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Normally one sets the black point and white point to an area of the curve where significant detail starts to show on the histogram, and that is definitely open to some interpretation. Once these are "correctly" set, then the mid-point is adjusted to bring in an appropriate level of exposure. I did mention that I did not touch the midpoint in my edits, but this is where personal taste comes in. I would probably darken both shots slightly, given the mood of the images.

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Originally Posted by GrumpyDiver

I would suggest just looking at images from other photographers to see how they handle this. There are many sources for this kind of information; books, websites, etc.

I often direct people to a to the website of another Ottawa photographer who often paid a lot of attention to people's hands when he photographed them. He would sometimes specifically light the hands of some of the people he was shooting. I suspect I may have directed you to this website before.

http://www.karsh.org/#/the_work/portraits/

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Once again thanks a lot for providing this link. Yes, it helped me a lot in the past too as you have provided his work in my previous thread.

Also, i have deliberately reduced the contrast in the image but seems I have to reprocess it again as i saw my post processing work again after 4 days and found i have done too far with the edits. I will reprocess both with subtle changes in contrast and will post it soon. :)

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Originally Posted by GiacomoD

very nice portraits.
I agree with Manfred about the need to set black and white point, but in my opinion his setting was a bit too aggressive, especially on the white side. I would prefer a softer approach, as in the image below.
Also, I would suggest for future shots to use a slightly more directional lighting (side lighting): here I simulated it using a gradient mask, just to show what could be the result.

On the other hand, I believe that in this field there is a lot of subjectivity and each of us tends to have his own interpretation of the portrait.

http://i60.tinypic.com/6gzkb4.jpg

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thanks a lot for your review and suggestion. I have deliberately reduced the contrast in the image but seems I have to reprocess it again as i saw my post processing work again after 4 days and found i have done too far with the edits. I will reprocess both with subtle changes in contrast and will post it soon. :)

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Originally Posted by arith

I think you have to lose the jewels, they are distracting. Apart from that maybe a bit more detail on the hair. It is easy to criticise but these are really fine photo's. Nothing is perfect though.

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Thanks a lot for your kind review and suggestion. :)