Portrait practical

[Rose]

Many thanks to those who organised last night's portrait practical - it was a good session and definitely made a difference having a tutor on hand. I've started processing my pics and am uploading them here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/rose_atkinson/sets/72157633272267011/

[Paul Heester]

Thanks for uploading Rose. They work well as a set, all their expressions are very natural as well and I can see you had good rapport with them.

[davidc]

I only had hand-held shots of the night and sadly all mine were blurry AND full of noise Didn't get any shots with the flash triggered by my camera.

[Rose]

Thanks for uploading Rose. They work well as a set, all their expressions are very natural as well and I can see you had good rapport with them.

Thanks Paul

[Nina]

Many thanks to those who organised last night's portrait practical - it was a good session and definitely made a difference having a tutor on hand. I've started processing my pics and am uploading them here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/rose_atkinson/sets/72157633272267011/

Thanks for uploading those Rose. I have sent the link to Kathy. I am sure she will be delighted.

[leonm]

Thanks again to management for organizing the event. I think Rose did a very nice job and had every emotion and all participants covered.

Firstly, I must confess, coming from my last shoot where I particularly wanted small prints, this was one setting I overlooked the night and ended up with only 4meg shots.

Find below my Flickr link where I've uploaded some of the photos

http://api.flickr.com/services/feeds/photoset.gne?set=72157633303809357&nsid=34444029@N07&lang=en-us

Your comments are most greatly appreciated.



Thanks in advance,

Matthew

[Mike Farley]

Hi Leon

Welcome to the forum. I have just added you to the Members group, so you will now be able to see the "For Sale or Wanted" section which is only available to club members.

From your comment about camera settings, I am guessing that you currently shoot in JPEG mode. This is OK when you want an image that is ready to view or print and are not intending to do much post capture processing, but Raw is the way to go. When you use JPEG, a lot of the information captured on the camera's sensor is irretrievably discarded, whereas with Raw it is retained and there is much more flexibility to make subsequent adjustments. There is a lot to learn in this game, but over time it will become familiar. One lesson that you have already taken on board is resetting the camera to the defaults you use after a session. I just wish I could always remember to do it!

If you are interested, I am running a small workshop at my house next week on 2 May to give an overview on Lightroom, software which has library management and image processing capabilities including Raw conversion. It would certainly help address the issues which you mention and more. I can squeeze in one more person and you can sign up at the relevant thread on this forum.

viewtopic.php?f=4&t=352

The forum also has an image critique section where you can get feedback and you might find this useful. Looking at the three you have posted, you have capured the expressions well and I get a feel for the sitters' personalities. I would say that the first one is a tad under exposed and the crop could be a bit tighter, as it could be on the third image as well. Do we need to see the stool on which Kathy is sitting, for example? The picture of Kathy's son (I never did find out how to spell his name - Ky?) is, for me, much too dark on the left of his face and his eye coming out of the gloom looks a bit odd. Lighting the face so that one side is lit and the other in shadow does help create mood, but the effect seems to be overdone in in this instance and I would have liked to have seen some detail in the darker areas. The background is a bit distracting, but you have done well to minimise it with the vignette.

It occurs to me that one reason that your images are under exposed is that your monitor is not calibrated and it is set to be too bright, so that the images look OK on your screen whereas correctly exposed images will seem too light. I wrote an article about this for the forum a while back, which you might find of interest.

viewtopic.php?f=2&t=127

Glad that you enjoyed the evening.

[leonm]

Hi Mike,

Thanks for all your enlightening comments. I use to shoot Raw+Jpeg a while back, but stepped down to Large Jpeg as I would seldom made use of the RAW files which was taking a vast amount of space on my hard drive.

I currently use Elements 11 with Camera Raw for editing, and trust I would need to acquire Lightroom before coming on the course. We'll have a chat later to discuss the best way forward.

Also, initially when joined the forum, a message confirmed that I could not upload files is the reason I did not post the photos in the critic section; but this is all sorted now.


Regards,

Matthew

[Mike Farley]

Hi Leon

Glad you found the feedback useful.

Now is not a good time to buy Lightroom as the beta of version 5 has just been released. Details are at this thread on the forum.

viewtopic.php?f=2&t=379

Adobe releases a beta as part of its final testing to ensure that the release product will work the wide variety of different PC configurations that exist in the wild. It's not so bad in the Mac world where Apple has a tight control of the components which go into its machines, but with so many manufacturers supplying parts it's a different story for Windows. Everything is supposed to be compatible, but .......

Being a beta, there might be robustness and performance issues with LR5 and I have heard reports of some people who already have Lightroom experiencing difficulties due to a clash between the two versions. That should not be the case for you, but you can also download a 30 day trial of the current offering from the Adobe website.

My advice would be to come along next week and use the session as an introduction to see whether you think it is for you. Personally, I could not manage without it, but other people have different views. You can download LR and have a play with it, but I would not say that it is an essential prerequisite. There is plenty of assistance available on the Internet to help you get going.

The requirement for large amounts of disk space is an inevitable consequence of digital imaging and ever increasing sensor densities allowing the capture of greater numbers of megapixels. One of the good things about Lightroom is that it can allow images libraries to be managed, across multiple disks if necessary. Dave C raised this question recently and my response is here.

viewtopic.php?f=4&t=352&start=10

Finally, I forgot to mention in my earlier response that only club members are allowed to upload images to the forum, which is necessary to conserve the limited disk space available to us from the hosting provider. All registered users are permitted to link to images hosted externally on sites such as flickr, but you needed to be added to the members group to get the full posting rights.

[Rose]

Thanks again to management for organizing the event. I think Rose did a very nice job and had every emotion and all participants covered.

Firstly, I must confess, coming from my last shoot where I particularly wanted small prints, this was one setting I overlooked the night and ended up with only 4meg shots.

Find below my Flickr link where I've uploaded some of the photos

http://api.flickr.com/services/feeds/photoset.gne?set=72157633303809357&nsid=34444029@N07&lang=en-us

Your comments are most greatly appreciated.



Thanks in advance,

Matthew

Thanks Leon Just off to have a look at yours now...