Hi, everybody! This is Craig Tanner for The Mindful Eye and the Daily Critique. Today’s image was submitted by Steve, who’s an intermediate photographer from Texas. Steve says this is an impromptu portrait he made Resonance Festival. And Steve shutter’s with an 13 200 using an 85 millimeter lens stop down to F56 and exposed the power for 200 second.

So he said that he was working with a friend here to make these portraits. One of things they were working is lighting they were using an night kind speed light running it through the small soft box and they have that attached to a monopod and I’m just sort of assuming they were taking turns holding the monopod with a flash and without in triggering that in some kind of remote way.

And in this case, that light is over here to camera left. Mimicking the sunlight of the sun in the background is key light on the portrait subject. We’ll talk more about that in a minute because one of the things that Steve asked about under questions and comments. He said that what I do think of the sunlight from the flash.

He also wanted to know about retouching. Just impromptu portrait like this. What I thought about that. So a quick answer the retouching question. If the question is and I do I think it’s sort okay to retouching the impromptu portrait, the answer would be absolutely. I mean this doesn’t even look like an impromptu portrait to me. It’s almost looks like a formal portrait. And then Wagon photography former portraiture commercial photography of people for all time, I mean going back to when we were shooting the big view cameras in glass plate and negatives and all that, retouching is been a part of the portrait process.

You know, if the question was more about what did I think of the quality of the retouching, I think this is beautiful. I mean I think great retouching is seamless. It does not call attention to itself. And without knowing this have been retouched, there’s nothing here to jump out of me to draw attention to retouching work over are just enjoying the subjects in the photograph.

We’ll talked about the lighting in just second. You know, when I look at this image, one of the things that I love almost right away is color. It’s very-very rich image from a color standpoint. Some really new color theory things are happening here. Simplicity of color but real dynamic color on the main subject red, white and black is real powerful color combination is really beautiful how her warm skin tone the color of her lips is harmonizing with the little bit of red that we’re seeing here. And her shirt really beautiful the way the red here gets harmonized in the background and you have all these green to balance the red which the red can be very dominating. Beautiful harmony and somebody darker shadows back here where the color of her hair, color of her eyes, color of the beret. And really neat seeing kind of the third dominant color idea coming and hears the feeling of blue and even a violet over here. Violet is playing off orange there; blue can play off of red, just very beautiful from a color theory standpoint. Very beautiful the white after field has been managed here. I love the fall of in focus. That’s really strong and in the image.

The only thing that I’m enjoying about the image is this person, I mean it seems like she could be a professional model and not only that but Steven his friend having the courage to just approach people in a situation like this. And it seems that they’ve built report in her. This is very close portrait. So physically close. I can make it difficult to do report.

You know in this sort of scenarios I do have approaching people impromptu way on the street. There are two things here that may have really help Steven and his friend. They maybe natural at doing these, so it may not be difficult for them but let’s say that you’re afraid and you would like to do this kind of work going out in group, even just one another person can really help you in the beginning in terms of having a positive response and the only thing that can help you is having something like whites.

Believe it or not, that sort of the more things that you have of the more people for like they’re being a part of something that’s fun and particularly if you tell them that you’re working and trying to get better was something like gliding. Can tend to really help you of report and just telling people right at front, you know. I’m working part of it. I’m working on how is getting over the fear of approaching people can really help to set the whole situation it is and just kind of identify the elephant in the room, which might the fear in your body language of the fear in your voice, it just some things to think about on that level.

This is really gorgeous portrait and so the things that I want to talk about now can hopefully help anybody that’s wanting to either get in the photograph and people, work with a little bit of lighting or maybe just improve your photography of people. I’m just going to talk about some variations that we might think of.

When it comes to the lighting, I think Steve and his friend are done a really great job. I’ve getting beautiful light into the eyes and well done they haven’t catch light in the eye appearing the top part of the eye. That’s all about placement of the light and there’s a little light to be reflecting like that is got to be a little bit higher than the middle of the eye.

That’s a classic position for key light. It’s mimicking the light in the background. Not just from a direction standpoint. It get a real strong sense of light moving in this direction. And also doing a pretty good job of mimicking the color temperature of that light. Light back and here looks warm. And light on the model looks warm. And I think all that’s working well.

One of the things that look a little bit unnatural, and please hear me saying I’m saying a little bit as the quantity of light that’s hitting her and also these specular highlights as sort of reflection of the light itself and the way light if following off on her. The sun is 93 million miles away and then various square law out of basically without going into and just describes how dramatically light falls off, as we take a subject and move it further and further away from the light.

It’s not like normal photography or a simple math, this is geometry. And so with the earth being 93 million miles away from the sun, the whole relative to where the sun is, is basically in the same place. In terms of getting a quantity of light based on numbers square law.

But when we start to bring in the light and we haven’t really close to a subject, it will fall off, incredibly, dramatically and you’re seeing that here from here all the way over to this shadow. You’re seeing how dramatically as light falling off in very short amount of space. And we could do one thing that would really help to solve several of these issues with the lighting if we want to make it look more natural and also make curl a look a little bit more how dramatic or a little more elegant. Not as just to take this light over here and feather it in this direction.

So right now, it’s sort of shooting straight in. It’s hitting kind of the middle part of her face relative to where the light is. If we rotate it this way, so that just an edge of that soft box is starting to hit somewhere in here and then falling off, it would cut down on all of these, it get rid of—it would stop accentuating all of these which is not the most important part of the portrait subject.

It would get rid of that fall off because we wouldn’t be seeing the light falling away as much because most of the light was starting here somewhere. You wouldn’t have a hard edge here to do with because it is soft box. You mean, just get a get a sense of the light falling off in this direction. You would have more of a feeling that sort of spotlight or model light right in the middle of her face and that would mimic the dominant lighting pattern that would seeing in the background more closely.

And feathering a light is huge. It’s a big attack away from the critiques that I am in the tendency as to check lights and just point them right into things and using the edge of the light can do many different things for you. Another thing that I would say here is just a little bit more of a dynamic compose shot on the face.

She’s like constrained and looks like Steve has his lens sort of in the middle of the composition coming up just a little bit high to low with accentuate the eyes a little bit more, she’s got dear full features everywhere in her face that would show off the lower mask of her face, a little bit more and it would cut down on what’s happening down in here. And it also they just make this a little bit more dynamic and we in a perfect role what I would like to see here is to talk to her and get to straighten up in terms of her shoulders to the camera.

So that we get this second shoulder over here from more symmetry of the base of the portrait and then as she screws up with her body she turns her head in a way that’s a little bit more of a three-quarter pose. So maybe we’re only really seen one ear and it’s a little bit more dynamic. And we go up higher with the camera. I might ask her too to pull her hair over these ears so that her hair is coming down here, maybe even all the way to here and that would make it even more dynamic.

And make her face more elegant and bring forward this part of her face. And please hear me say those in a lot of ways, I'm sort of not picking here. Here is not a super rough way but it looks like if we have that other shoulder and I think it really helps to sort of balance the based of the image and gorgeous portrait. For all the reasons that I’ve already mentioned, great job here Steve and his friend building report and it’s just so rich from a color standpoint and you know she looks like a professional model. She’s beautiful; she’s got a great expression here. It’s a great portrait.

I wanted to say a big thank you to Steve for sharing this with us on The Mindful Eyes, Daily Critique.