Portrait of Wife II

[DigiMattPhotography]

Ok guys it took me more than a week to do a reshoot but I finally made it happen. I took your advice about shooting from above; I had here sit on the grass (it was only slightly wet ;) Shot was taken with my 50mm f1.4 at f2.8 1/320 and I used a little fill flash from my 580ex. She was sitting in the shade under a tree. So here is the photo........please whip away.



http://digimattphotography.smugmug.com/photos/202840952-L.jpg


http://digimattphotography.smugmug.com/

Canon 400D
Speedlight 580EX
Canon 70-200mm f4.0L
Canon 10-22mm f3.5-4.5
Canon 50mm f1.4
Hoya Cir-Polarizer

[Felicia]

I like this shot for the capture of her beautiful eyes and overall composition. I'm interested in the photo and want to linger over it. There are a couple of elements which are throwing me off:
1) That pink flower keeps pulling my focus back to it. It's competing with her eyes. Maybe you could darken it or cover it over with some of the greenery.
2) The fill light feels a little hot, like it's bleached her face a tad too much. Perhaps bringing up the shadows a little more, bringing up the blacks or touching the exposure down a bit would help. I'd like to see the planes of her face just a bit more.
3) The pattern on her blouse is also pulling some of the focus. I keep wondering what that black and white pattern is.

Mes deux centimes.

[urbanaries]

AMAZING improvement over first shot!!! Well done!!!

I love the light in her eyes, the shooting perspective and the colors. Her skin tone looks really nice, too. (ETA: on my uncalibrated work monitor :grin)

The flash may be a tad hot, but I think it's still within acceptable range. The one thing I that might help you from here on out (and this is minor compared to where you started :), is to have your wife tilt her head slightly and maybe shoot her from a non perpendicular angle.

Beautiful portrait and great job implementing the critiques.

:clap

[jfriend]

Hmm, the skin tone sure looks too bright and too cold to me. When I check the CMYK numbers, the Yellow is way less than the Magenta which usually means there's too much blue. The face also looks so bright that I have a hard time seeing skin detail. Am I the only one seeing this? I am on an uncalibrated laptop at the moment, but usually it's not way off.

The composure works for me. I find the pink and the white on the right side of the background a little distracting against her dark hair. I also find her hair so dark that it's hard to see much detail. That can be OK (to push your eyes to her face), but I personally like seeing a little more detail in the hair. A small shadow move in shadow/highlights can solve this.

[Gary Glass]

It's blown out and flat. The light is straight onto her face like an on-camera flash. This will be flattering to almost nobody, because it washes out their features. "Classic" lighting for women is butterfly (two lights, left and right), though of course the possibilities are endless.