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Make up
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I want to apologise for not commenting on your work Ali but I know feck all about fashion photography and am loath to put my foot in it. Technically they are excellent and you have your own style which is really important.
Thx a mil Valentia – i’m always reluctant myself to comment on areas of photography i don’t delve into myself. Really appreciate the comments and i’ll be expecting to see you in here giving you’re opinion from now on :D
Ali
I have kept coming back to these shots cos there was something about the make up that bothered me and I cound just not figure out
Is the silver glitter on the lips is not bright enought or that the skin make up does not allow the true effect of what you are trying
I think that I know the effect you are looking for and I think that the skin tone is too fresh / summery if that makes sence ????
(I’m way out of my league commenting on portrait photography as my brain tends to assess the content rather than the presentation, the model rather than the photographer), but I think these are great. For me, the heavier shadow on the side of the nose in the leftmost image would be the only not-quite-perfect thing. Also, I do like the three pictures together. Would that make this a triptych?
In my opinion, not your best work to date Ali although I like the idea of the three images together. My biggest gripe is that the colour balance appears to be way off. How did you set the whitebalance for these? I recognise the fact that fashion shots often work with an incorrect colour balance, but not here, particularly when the objective appears to be to show off the makeup. Or am I being to harsh with my critique?
Thorsten wrote:
Not your best work to date Ali although I like the idea of the three images together. My biggest gripe is that the colour balance appears to be way off. How did you set the whitebalance for these? I recognise the fact that fashion shots often work with an incorrect colour balance, but not here, particularly when the objective appears to be to show off the makeup. Or am I being to harsh with my critique?
Nope, I don’t think so.. I think your comments are fair. I’d have to agree about the colour balance. As you’re doing so much of this work now I think it would be well worth looking into a way of ensuring accurate colour balance each time (i.e. grey card/colour card). Getting it right in camera during the capture means you’ll be able to produce accurate results each time with a lot less effort.
Hi Ali,yet again your STYLE is coming through more and more. These make a cool layout,now as what the guys are talking about mm well some is fair enough and other stuff is just plain off the wall(non-constructive waffle) anyways for me the white balance is just a little off but a quick fix of the raw file resolves that. Shooting grey cards is a real help indeed or a new device called Expo-Disc fits just like a lens cap and you fire a shot with it on first according to your lighting conditions and must 90% of the time its bang on.
It kinda looks like the right light is a stop above the left as its highligting the right side of her face,actually do you meter from in-camera(Spot) or handheld. The later is prob way more reliable than in camera as to try and perfect this type of photography is really a case of trial and error.
Wonder if you placed one single softbox over head 45 towards face and fill with a tri-flector with silver buterfly leaves it will do all of the above with correct distribution of light to both side of face. Worth a try.
Anyways 8)ben wrote:
now as what the guys are talking about mm well some is fair enough and other stuff is just plain off the wall(non-constructive waffle)
:?: I think everyone is entitled to express their opinion and critique. I don’t find your comments helpful, to either Ali or the people/person that took time out to critique the shot. I wonder why you felt the need to comment like that?
ben wrote:
actually do you meter from in-camera(Spot) or handheld.
In fact in-camera is “reflective” metering NOT spot (although you can use spot metering mode in a reflective light meter, as you can other modes like center weighted, evaluative etc.). You can’t how ever use an in-camera reflective light meter to meter when using studio flash!
ben wrote:
The later is prob way more reliable than in camera as to try and perfect this type of photography is really a case of trial and error.
It’s also a fallacy to believe that incident light meters are more accurate. Both types of meters have their uses, advantages and disadvantages. You just need to understand when it’s best to use one over the other and/or use them together.
In camera metering can be spot metering if the camera has that facility. Equally spot metering can be done with an incident meter. Spot metering has nothing to do with whether it is incident or reflective.
As far as the most accurate goes, incident is nearly always the most accutate as it measures the light falling on the subject. The only sure way of duplicating this in camera is to take a reflective reading from an 18% grey card (or your hand believe it or not). The camera will always try to recreate 18% grey.
Valentia wrote:
Equally spot metering can be done with an incident meter. Spot metering has nothing to do with whether it is incident or reflective.
I’ve always understood spot metering to be reflective. In my 20 odd years doing photography I’ve not yet come across incident spot metering, but I’d be keen to learn!
Hey Ali,
I really like these shots. Don’t know half (1/4) of the technical part that is discussed above, but I like the three pictures put together, wouldn’t like them so much as individual shots but when taken together, they give the appearance that she has become aware that she is being looked. The reason for this is the eyes being not fully closed, you can just make out the pupil in the first 2 shots, also you pull back a little at each shot.
As I said I am not good at the technical critique, but I do like them just the same. :)Thorsten wrote:
Valentia wrote:
Equally spot metering can be done with an incident meter. Spot metering has nothing to do with whether it is incident or reflective.
I’ve always understood spot metering to be reflective. In my 20 odd years doing photography I’ve not yet come across incident spot metering, but I’d be keen to learn!
Well it seems to me if you take a light reading from a particular spot with an incident meter, it is spot metering. In fact a reading of a spot smaller than most reflective or camera meters would manage It usually refers to a metering mode in-camera. But naturally incident reading is, by its very nature spot metering. Surely? That’s what I mean.
ben wrote:
…now as what the guys are talking about mm well some is fair enough and other stuff is just plain off the wall(non-constructive waffle) anyways for me the white balance is just a little off but a quick fix of the raw file resolves that.
I’d be interested in hearing which aspects of the critique so far are “fair enough” and which ones are “plain off the wall”. Also, you’re making an asumption that the shots were taken using RAW mode. That may not be the case, in which case white balance correction would prove a little more tricky (but not impossible).
ben wrote:
a new device called Expo-Disc fits just like a lens cap and you fire a shot with it on first according to your lighting conditions and must 90% of the time its bang on.
The Expodisc has been around a long time and it does give excellent results, but I find it too expensive and quite literally, a waste of time! It’s a waste of time because you have to take the time to fit it to your lens, take a shot with the filter on and then fiddle with the camera to set up your custom white balance. By the time you’ve done that, the shot you were hoping to get could be gone. Then you move to a different light (say outdoors to indoors) and you’ve got to repeat the process all over again. I use a more elegant solution, which works particularly well if you shoot RAW but also works very well for JPEG shooters – it’s called WhiBal. Using the WhiBal, all you do is take a reference shot of the card in the same light as your subject. You can take this reference shot before or after you’ve taken the actual shot you want to have, it doesn’t matter, because you make the white balance adjustment afterwards in your raw converter. This method is really fast and very versatile and you can correctly white balance hundreds of images from the same shoot in very little time. I highly recommend it.
Thorsten,
Is it possible to do a custom white balance under studio lights using a white card? (I have never used digital in studio) Using the same light set up shouldn’t using that custom profile create consistant results? Or is my logic flawed?
Thanks,
Danny
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