first pic with my new nifty

sikahunter

c&c welcome but be careful thats my lil sister

sikahunter

also first time trying b and w

Crispin

sikahunter wrote: »

c&c welcome but be careful thats my lil sister

looks ok, just need a link to the bigger image if you're on flickr or pix.ie?
Hard to C and C such a small image.

AnCatDubh

nice portrait. I'm guessing candid rather than posed (apologies if i'm wrong) - the basis of that assumption is that she's very natural which unless she's used to posing can be a difficult thing to achieve.

Not sure if the crop at top of head is a little distracting - it's so tight that its neither here or there but certainly doesn't destroy the image.

You've done very well with the angle that you are shooting from - a low angle typically isn't a subject flattering angle but you've managed to make good with it. If to pose her a little, I would suggest to stretch the neck a little by means of extending her chin in an upward direction.

I like the b/w conversion. you haven't gone to high contrast route but you also haven't been too 'greyed' out by the whole conversion thing. This is good.

I like the noise - it's not too high and adds atmosphere to the b/w. Out of curiosity can you state what camera and what ISO?

I'm undecided on this next one. Her right hand kind of appears from no where - it may have been better if there were a little context of where the hand comes from (we are conditioned to expect a hand to be attached to an arm, to be attached to a body, etc.., etc...) but again it doesn't destroy the image as i've seen often elsewhere. Thinking about it a little more, that would alter your framing significantly which mightn't work at all. Nevertheless have a think about whether it would have been possible even to consider it in the context of your location, etc..

If you were to pose her a little i'd have swivelled her body - left shoulder backwards ever so slightly to give a slightly more flattering perspective on the torso. Of course you could also have just altered the camera position if you didn't want to alert her and perhaps ruin the natural candid nature of the shot.

When you've altered the torso position, i'd have altered the head ever so slightly in the opposite direction and back towards the camera but not to look head on at the camera. As it stands, a good 1/4 of the face is covered by the hair and one eye is covered with the hair style (near one) but the other eye is just about in and just about out of the frame due to the angle of the head looking away. As with hand attached to arm, etc..., a viewer will expect to see eyes in a portrait which is why you'll often hear 'focus of the eyes and nothing else will matter if you get that right'. If you don't have a clear eye to focus on then the mind is left wondering about the composition.

The focus generally and depth of field I think are good. What aperture did you shoot? Were you wide open? The bokeh is nice but maybe a little too overpowering. I've recently been finding more interesting bokeh at about f5.6 or thereabouts. I'd normally have gone as low as the lens could have gone but of recent times, i'm finding it interesting to push up the aperture value and use focal length and distance to balance the desired bokeh.

I think you've done a really nice job. All of the above are only a personal opinion which you have every right to disagree with and discard

You are also very lucky to have a very beautiful model in your family to practice on - so you'd better be nice to her that she might oblige you in your future portrait endeavours

Hope that helps.

sikahunter

thanks for the c&c was using a canon 450d first try at a portait was candid f stop was f2 iso was 800 exposure was 1/50 of a sec