Gorgeous girl - terrible photo... by robz

Gorgeous girl - terrible photo...

My get-pushed partner noticed that there were no portraits in my project - hence that became my challenge. Unfortunately, we now know why there were no portraits!
Hi Jacqueline - here's another go - still not coming to grips with all the skills involved! Will have one more go......
@jacqbb
January 17th, 2019  
Hi Rob, As you said she is absolutely beautifulI. And you focused on her beautiful eyes. I hope I may give you some feedback. I would have used a little more light ( lamps or natural) use a low aperature, try to avoid that black line on the left. No worries when you don’t have the time, x jacqueline
January 17th, 2019  
@jacqbb Hi Jacqueline- thanks so much for your suggestions. The line on the left is awful - but my subject was in a hurry - I had to find a quick spot for her to stand. And I now know how time consuming it must be to set up proper conditions to take a nice portrait! Just getting a suitable backdrop and some decent lighting isn't easy. As for the camera settings - I know nothing about apertures as my camera doesn't allow me to dictate them at all. I do know that the area of the aperture increases as the f-stop no, decreases. So when you say to use a low aperture are you actually saying a low f-stop no. to have a wide open lens? Or does this terminology mean to actually have a smaller opening to the lens? Once I know this I can usually figure out how to make my camera do what I want by using the settings which are available. I tried the portrait setting but it wasn't much use for this because the lighting was not much good. I'll do a bit more of a Google and have one more go. Thanks for your help!! Cheers Rob
January 17th, 2019  
@robz Hi Rob, for my portraits I used f4,6 and f5,6, I love a shallow dof especially with portraits. I'm not interested in the background then only the face. And I always edit those photo's, the colour on both of them was terrible so they became b&w portraits, and you can play then with a lighter or darker background. I hope this makes a little sense. x Jacqueline
January 17th, 2019  
Ahh - I just had a look at the info for this - the camera used f5.0 so I guess that explains why the background is a bit blurry. I'll have a bit of a play in Picmonkey and see what happens. I'll let you know if I can make it any better i b&w and export it to here again. Thanks again! :)
January 17th, 2019  
@jacqbb Do you think it's any better?
January 17th, 2019  
It has a dreamy old world look in soft tones and this is emotive.
January 18th, 2019  
@robz Yes, it is has the feel of a 1950’s photo and the b&w is an improvement! Well done :)
January 18th, 2019  
@fr1da Thanks for your feedback Frida -from what you have said it must be much better than it was... it was not very nice before! I really appreciate your comment - this portrait gig is not easy! Cheers Rob. :)
January 18th, 2019  
@jacqbb Hi Jacqueline I think it's better too - I think the style of
Anna's hair is suited to that slightly vintage feel. Thanks so much for your suggestions. Cheers Rob
January 18th, 2019  
I laughed out loud reading your narrative!! I really want to get better at portraits too. Certainly a skill!
January 18th, 2019  
@robz You’re very welcome, I was glad to be of help!
January 18th, 2019  
She is lovely Rob, nice soft portrait.
January 18th, 2019  
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