Christmas Portraiture

magical time of year

This time I used a command within Photoshop which merged the three images, converted to black and white and used all automatic settings. Think this worked a little better than the hour I spent messing about
It also only took a fraction of the time at approx 2 minutes

This was one of my images from the studio, but I always felt the eyes were too dark.
I decided to save three copies at different exposures as tiffs rather than jpegs as not to compress the file.
I then over-layed the three images and altered to black and white

Overall I think this brought my image to life, bringing detail not only to the eyes but also to various sections of the jacket and buckles.

You can get carried away with this process and should try to capture everything in the studio with the camera

Other things which would need to be taken into consideration

• who's the image for
• what the image is for
• what your trying to put across
• what age group are you aiming it for
• the environment / surroundings you are in
• is the image for a magazine, if so will the image require space
• composition
• mood

So much requires thought, but should come naturally with experience and practice, even just walking into a situation without your camera and looking at where you are, the available light, the direction of the light, the colours etc.

After doing further research and more reading, I don't think it is as easy as choosing your lighting and knowing what your going to do. I think you need to step back and look at your subject in the environment to help decide what sort of lighting etc you are going to choose.
some faces work better in black & white, some in high saturation, low saturation, high key, low key, full on, profile etc.
You need to consider every aspect.

A scan out of my book "The Portrait Photographers Lighting Style Guide"
Section on full faces
Not just because Carl Foggarty was a hero of mine, but this is an awesome portrait for me, capturing the intensity of his gaze, which he was renown for during his reign as British & World Superbike champion

 Again another HDR portrait from the same book, showing how almost cartoony images can become.

 This image was under the section "low Saturation", but I dont think the scan gives it full credit, looks a lot better in the book obviously

 Section on using Ring Flash and other types of lighting












and various types of portraiture such as Travel and Street

Due to my inexperience within the studio environment, I put together a sort of check list complete with a few inspirational images for when I'm in the studio. Hopefully this will help to stop my mind from going a little blank and help me focus at the task at hand.
I get in the studio and know what I'm after, but then get a little excited and carried away and stray from my actual first idea. I think this is also to do with having so many different ideas and wanting to get as much as possible done in such a short period of time.