Portrait Help

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Permalink Reply by Rob Bixby on March 20, 2009 at 5:30pm

Minor issue, iron the backdrop. The severely wrinkled material is distracting. Set another light source for the background. By adding a back-light, it evens the lighting and adds depth between the subject and background. White balance is hard to verify on an image like this, unless the background is supposed to be white, which I don't think is the case. Even a white background will appear gray if the subject is far enough away to allow a drop-off of the light, another reason for a back-light.

The only thing I would recommend with shooting the dogs is stop down your lens to increase the depth of field, say to f8 or so. Then focus on the eyes. Shooting people, or any other animal, you have to keep the eyes as sharp as possible. If you have multiple subjects, a shallow DoF will usually result in one of them being out of focus. Shooting animals, or children (as if there is a difference), the use of a small aperture will require boosting the light enough to shoot quickly, they just don't want to hold still for slower shutter speeds.
Congratulations of finding LR, I have been using it since the first release and love it. Have a great weekend.

Rob

Permalink Reply by Nena on March 21, 2009 at 11:41am

Hi Rob
Thank you for the input. I have done outdoor photography for years so now the artificial light is really challenging me.
I am using Incandescent lights and my photos are coming out with a yellowing effect. I corrected the white balance in LR and I am now experimenting with the camera settings. Can you tell me if there is a recommend wattage to use for Incandescent? I think my lighting is low. I am using 3 lights 1 is 500w and the other two are 250w. Should the back light be positioned from above or below? With the dogs (which I would really like to do more of) it would be hard to hide a light behind them.
Thanks for you help.