Hi, everybody this is Greg Stainer for the Mind Full Eye and Daily Critic, today I mage was submitted by Rebecca who is an intermediate photographer from Tennessee. Rebecca said she shot this in her small home studio and hat she’s been working lightly on portrait lighting and her Photoshop work relative to portrait retouching and let’s get right into the critic today on of the things. I love about this image is Rebecca it lighting relative to the eyes. It goes a lot of saying that the eyes are in so many portraits the most important part of the image and Rebecca has a great sparkle to eyes over all and row dramatic catch lights, really draws our attention to where it probably should go in this photograph. Even though the lighting is sort of open and even over all, there is still a flow to the light you see on the top half of the portrait some settle drop shadows underneath the different features of the face and more of a dramatic feeling of drop shadows in the lower part of the portrait.
And you see an overall feeling of flow of light from this side being bright to this side being darker but in the lower part of the portrait and in the face. The difference between a highlight and shadow is what creates the illusion of form and so even though the lighting is open and softer there is still a dimension to the lighting that I really like. Something else that Rebecca has worked within this image must be something that I point out quite a bit when I’m teaching portrait or whether it’s a form of portrait like this in prompt two portraits. And that’s the idea of tying the background the portrait subject together working with this little bit of color fear, it’s where you might take minor color idea on the purchase subject like black hair that’s happening in around the eyes and make it the dominant background idea or vice versa.
I might change this background out for a painted background that was mostly lets say muted blue with just some flex of one tons that would harmonize the dominant color idea and the foreground of the portrait. That really exciting mixed of harmony where two things are the same but there is a very different amount of the same thing. Relative to background and portrait subject is a really powerful way to tie background and portrait subject together and have unity but at the same time have it to be dynamic.
The other thing that I’m enjoying in this image is a negative space shapes, they don’t flatten out fairly dynamic space shape and the two space shapes are the same in terms of shape but different in terms of sizes and that helps to keep things dynamic. And it also plays a lot of in terms the proportion that plays off of the way the pose here is presenting the shoulders, down at shoulder here and then dominant space shape on the other side that balance out, minor space shape here in the shoulder going away here I think those things are working pretty well. When it comes to perfect world improvement, I’d love to see a couple of variations of this one for just talking about what happened in camera.
There is a really strong sense of symmetry to this being shot straight in both on the face and also with what the hair is framing the face and we’ve already mention that in the negative space shapes. That symmetry falls down a little bit on this one area with this arm going away you’ve got sort of the repetition of semi circles that happens here and then that kind of goes away. And I would love to see the arm pull forward in one variation. A little bit more here, the other thing I would love to see is a variation where the face is just tilt that maybe a little bit of center or the head is turned so it’s not quite so straight end one it’s just a little bit more done in it.
And it comes to post processing I would like to make things more dynamic. I would like to create more of the feeling the flow of light is already there living in this direction and I would like to do that in a way that’s its going. To bring the face forward more with all of the open lighting of the hair and the lower part of the portrait have a lot of weight. I would like to cut down on the weight of those things and really make this persons face which is very beautiful and the eyes and nose and lips. The dominant features of the face come forward a little bit more, so let’s look at the work that I’ve done to create that effect. The first thing that I did was I came on and I change the shape of the catch lights. If I’m going to create a feeling that light is coming more from right to lefts then it won’t be believable if the catch looks like the light center then evenly white it.
So I'm going to change the shape of the cast lighting on them, take it from what look almost like a ring like to something that shaped a little bit more like this, like a soft box angled on the side. And I’m also going to use cloning to get rid of this highlight in the hair the shinning right along the edge it really can pull you way up here in the portrait. And so here are those changes. You will see the catch lights changing in shape and being waited to our right and you’re going to see that bright area at the top of the head get clowned out or go away.
The next thing that I did was a little bit of a soft focus filter on both some areas of the face emphasis those areas and again make the exciting features of the face come forward. And I wanted to put a little bit of a blur on the hair. It’s a very detailed against the background and I want to soften that. So there is the soft focus filter, I’ll turn that on and off again one, more time. The next thing that I did was use curse to start to push for this more dramatic lighting pattern you’re going to see me make it everything in the image with the exception of this area right in here. Go much darker and I will turn that layer on, there it is.
I did this change in luminosity blending mode so that color wouldn’t be effected but during and luminosity blending mode you can see that this can has become much warmer and more saturated. So I came in and use few saturation to get rid of that to bring this a little bit not I’m not back, I’m more towards the neutral skin tone and then I came in and did a course adjustment. Where I extenuated the contrast and the eyes on the nose, on the lips, and on this side of face just continuing push for this more dramatic lighting pattern and there is that change.
The next thing that I did was I tried to create overall of feeling that the light was more of a hard light source just continuing to push this lighting pattern. And I’ve applied that almost everywhere to the image. And that’s that change I did this in normal blending mode because I wanted this sort of, I wanted the drama of adding a little bit of the color and saturation that I knew would come with that change to basically what was the middle of the curves making it more dramatic stiffing that part of the curve.
But I didn’t want that change and saturation, warmth to appear everywhere, so I came back in, and I used a few saturation layers and then a color balance layer to get rid of that warmth. Been in a lot of places and I left it on the lips and on the eyes, in the make up around the eyes and then some areas on the cheeks. And then the very last thing that I did here was one of the last things I do in a lot of my Photoshop work to any image, from landscaper protects your people. All create a blank layer that goes to soft light blending mode I’ll paint with black at a very low opacity to extenuate the existing lighting pattern. And do and try and create more form by exaggerating the shadows creating more exaggerated difference between highlight and shadow but trying to do that relative to the lighting pattern that all ready exist in the image.
And so here is that layer, here is where we start it and here is where we ended up with a goal being to bring the face forward more and make exciting part of the features of the face the nose, and eyes, and mouth come forward more in the portrait so one more time there is what for. And there is after you’d love to hear your feedback about this, we’d love to hear from Rebecca.
I want to say a big thank you to Rebecca for submitting a beautiful, beautiful light in the eyes here, really nice flow of light to create the potential for a lot of farm in the portrait really great job of harmonizing the portrait subject with the background. Big thank you to Rebecca for sharing this image with us on the mindful eyes daily critique.
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