Re: Re: My Favorite! B&W Photography!!

#19914
Duncan Rawlinson
Keymaster

I’m going to try to do this one quite succinctly. I hate to admit this but I’m completely exhausted today so I don’t have as much energy as I normally do. I hope you understand.

Your absolutely correct. A wide tonal range is quite difficult to shoot properly.

In these two lovely portraits you’ve got somewhat of a high tonal range.

As always with these assignments there is no right or wrong answer. Just do your best and improve your photography. These are two of your strongest images yet. Of course there are a few things for me to help with on these:

Photo 1 The pregnant lady and her husband.

[attachment=1:2dq6cdub]pregnant.jpg[/attachment:2dq6cdub]

1: Crooked
This is a lovely image but don’t forget your basics! There is the equivalent of a horizon line in this photograph in the form of the line on the back wall. Normal people (non geeky photographer types) may not consciously see this but it will feel somewhat off. You could just lower your camera a bit and crop that off in camera. Alternatively you can use it to your advantage and shoot what’s known as a dutch angle: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_angle

2: Clutter
You could shoot this without this element entirely to make for a cleaner frame.

3: Heart!
Not sure if this was intentional or not but this heart is lovely!!

4: Extra clothes
Don’t worry about cheating and pulling things like this out of the frame. This will slim the model quite a bit (if that’s what they want)

next photo:

This is a nice portrait but it felt odd to me at first.

It took me a minute or two to recognize what it was but this particular pose reminds of of a snowman. There are three circles in this frame.

See here:
[attachment=0:2dq6cdub]snowwoman.jpg[/attachment:2dq6cdub]

See the three circles (item 3)

Item 1:
The catch light is very nice. Well done here.

Item 2:
The hair looks lovely as well! So good on ya!

Item 3:
The previously three circles that make this photo look more snowwomanlike to me than anything.

Maybe I’m just tired but I think another pose would have been better.

Thanks for your patience with me on this one.

btw, If you want to read more about this there are some good portrait posing tips here:
http://www.digital-slr-photography-tips.com/portrait-poses.html