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Last week I attended a couple of excellent photographic workshops by Peter Coulson aka Koukei

I wanted to put the theory into practice on the following weekend and arranged an assortment of models / styles to share with one other photographer in a studio.

Here are a few of the varied results... I'd really really really appreciate your feedback / critique...

- - - - - PLEASE Respect the models - they will be reading this thread - - - - -

Izzy - Don't Hate Me Because I'm Skinny

Siona - Ballet Shadows

Emma - Almost Famous

Annika - Gothic

Katie - Toyota Jump

Kimberley - Gold Leaf


Many more images to follow...

As iam totally unqualified to comment on portraiture I will comment on the models.

Izzy, slim and beautiful, surely no one could hate her.
Sonia, very graceful moves.
Emma, music to my eyes.
Annika, makes goth gorgeous.
Katie, now I have to buy a Toyota.
Kimberly, worth her weight in gold.



To me the lighting tends to suit each shot although the light on Annika is a lovely soft light and I would have thought a harder light would suit the goth theme better.

Hi John,

You've mostly nailed the lighting and exposure in these images, but I don't think that the wb has been nailed.

In the first image in particular, look at the shadowed areas in Izzy's singlet and you can see a colour cast. This is not unlike what you might see in shots made in the snow, and strongly suggestive to me that the wb is not correct. These shadow areas should be neutral (grey) in their colouration; rather than the cyan that I'm seeing.

This effectively translates to a cooling down of the skin tones elsewhere in the image.

With Siona, her leading hand is quite hot and probably out of character for the rest of the image.

I'd like to see the sharpening pulled back on the last two images, too.

Cheers.

A great bunch of shots John, the models all look great. No doubt a fun day.

My only (very slightly) negative cooment is the rose and the candle thingy in
the Annika-Gothic shot just look too contrived to me. The Annika part of the
image needs no embellishment in my view (I repeat, a very minor point)

Nice series John - looks like you had a bit of fun at the session.

Can you please tell me about the lighting in the last (gold leaf) one. If I was to critique I would say that that one looks a bit shiney and could have used a touch more diffusion.

An excellent collection of photos. I love the balley dancer - nice choice of lighting and the shadows make the image perfect.

Alex

CraigVTR wrote:Izzy, slim and beautiful, surely no one could hate her.
Sonia, very graceful moves.
Emma, music to my eyes.
Annika, makes goth gorgeous.
Katie, now I have to buy a Toyota.
Kimberly, worth her weight in gold.

They all liked that Craig - thanks...

gstark wrote:You've mostly nailed the lighting and exposure in these images, but I don't think that the wb has been nailed.

In the first image in particular, look at the shadowed areas in Izzy's singlet and you can see a colour cast.

Izzy's singlet was sorta that colour, but I always struggle with white balance, so you're probably right.

gstark wrote:With Siona, her leading hand is quite hot and probably out of character for the rest of the image.

It was a lot worse than that before PP... It's difficult to get that shadow effect without getting some hotspots on the model... not sure how I could've avoided it completely.
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Greg B wrote:A great bunch of shots John, the models all look great. No doubt a fun day.

My only (very slightly) negative cooment is the rose and the candle thingy in
the Annika-Gothic shot just look too contrived to me. The Annika part of the
image needs no embellishment in my view (I repeat, a very minor point)

We were in the studio for 2 solid days so these are only a few of the sets we shot... Many more to bore you with over the coming weeks

I'd tend to agree Greg... I was working with another photographer and she is into romantic themes like this... Annika was her model as well... I was just so entranced by Annika's face - I had to get a shot too...

Willy wombat wrote:Nice series John - looks like you had a bit of fun at the session.

Can you please tell me about the lighting in the last (gold leaf) one. If I was to critique I would say that that one looks a bit shiney and could have used a touch more diffusion.

I really should learn to take a shot of the lighting setup each time I change it shouldn't I

From memory though, it was a single oblong softbox lighting the model from the right. It wasn't pointing directly at the model it was pointing across the front of the shot... that way you get diffuse light coming from 3 reflectors in the softbox hitting the model from different angles... The shininess is probably due to the baby oil that was used to apply the gold leaf.
A little of that stuff goes a long way, and in this case it went too far... I still think that the makeup artist Josh had the best job all day though

Alex wrote:An excellent collection of photos. I love the balley dancer - nice choice of lighting and the shadows make the image perfect.

Alex

Thanks Alex... It took about 10 attempts to get light, model, camera & background in the right place, but once we nailed it we got some good shots... I'm hoping to make a series of 4 different poses / shadows soon...