Selling photos

[minutephotos.com]

A group of fine ladies. How many lights did you use. What I see is a bit of over exposure. Well you did say you had no meter. So how did you get that close to good exposure?

I used 2 Alien Bee 800's with umbrellas. This was my first time using them and i now realize I had them set too high, too close and too low :-).

I thought I needed more power because I was shooting a group shot. I was also trying to shoot with a larger aperture like a f18-f22 to increase dof which also meant more power for back row.

Now I would have shot differently, I would have raised main light higher to face down at a 45 degree angle instead of from front to back. My fill light would have been back further and 45 degrees from camera position. I would have also put main light in center instead of both lights on the sides. (this caused shadows from both sides.)

As such I could have reduced power on Main strobe.

Thanks for comments every bit helps. I have also found the People Forums

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Well minute, you are definately on cue. Thats how we all learn. As long as we know the basics we know what point to improve from. Photography is nothing but improvement. I like your photos especially the one that looks like this young ladys sister:-)

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eric, my mentor, I have the utmost respect for your critique. And Im a glutten for imrpovement. Be honest to me of what you think of this compostion. As you have been constructively critical of some of my other photos. I know it can sell, but I want professional opinion in these contemporary times.

[eric s]

There are two ways to look at a picture critically.
One is for things like composition. The other is for exposure and lighting.

I don't do portrait work, so while I can say what I like or dislike I can't say what should be done or not. That comes from experience that I don't have.

I can comment on exposure and such (I can't say how get good lighting, 'cause again I haven't done portrait work and have no experience with more than 2 light sources; the sun and my one flash.)

I think you did a good job with the exposure on the first picture. The baby's outfix isn't blown out, and you can see detail in the skin and hair.

Compositionally it isn't great but isn't that bad either. The hand lends a bit of framing. I'm not a fan of cutting off the right arm (our left) but I also don't think it's bad per-say. Just not the best.

Something is odd in the second picture. Is this a picture of a picture? I think the frame reproduced very badly. But the JPG compression seems to be high as well, something is just wrong with her face. It looks like artifacts to me. I'm not really sure I should comment on it beyond that I like the pose and the lighting seems fairly good. Again you did a good job with the exposure.

Eric

[minutephotos.com]

I like your photos especially the one that looks like this young ladys sister:-)

They have another thing in common, they both love the camera.... Pretty baby, I love shots of kids they look so much more natual in photos.

There are two ways to look at a picture critically.
One is for things like composition. The other is for exposure and lighting

For me there is a third, picture quality, in terms of sharpness, color and noise

I did some comparison shots today comparing the Sigma 70-200 2.8 EX to the Canon 70-200 2.8L. Man they are both extremely sharp. In my opinion the Canon is a little sharper, but colors are idientical.

What do you guys think? Here are samples both shot at 200MM f2.8 /15th RAW.

This first one is the Sigma 70-200 F2.8

[minutephotos.com]

This one is the Canon 70-200 F2.8L.

I shot these in RAW and trasfered to 16bit TIFF. But when I used Photoshop CS to save for web to get file size down to 200KB the image dimensions stayey large.

Anyway, here is the Canon.