This person is an expert in politics of the Democratic Republic of Congo. Very interesting things happen all over the world while we are intent at looking at our navel.
As far as photography is concerned I have discovered that dark skin is difficult to reproduce well without a flash, or perhaps I'm not just good enough. Any suggestions?
He has a lovely face but I can see what you mean about lighting. If you use LightRoom the Radial Gradient will do the trick, in Photoshop or Luminar try the Dodge tool. He sure hails from a very dangerous part of the world.
I think we don't stop often enough to reflect on how lucky most of us are. I'm afraid I don't know anything about portraits and lighting so I'm pleased Marnie could make some suggestions for you. Cheers Rob
@golftragic Thank you Marnie for your suggestions. I have already tried the radial filter. Not enough. Perhaps PS WOULD work BETTER. I’ll try with the next African stranger
@domenicododaro You are probably right. It's never easy when the stranger you picked accepts and looks at you expectantly. But I will remember the lesson each time I have a dark skinned model
@caterina a little trick could be to bracket each shot by + and - 1 stop. If you use the continuous shooting mode, you just take three images every time and 7 times out of 10, one will be the right exposure!
So it sounds like it was artificial light. At least part of the problem with this shot seems to be White Balance. I assume his shirt is white, and as you can see it looks yellowish. If your file is a raw file you can correct this with the white balance controls in lightroom. Once you get the correct white in the shirt, then I agree with Domenico you should adjust the exposure to lighten the image until it is correctly exposed. You might try bringing up the shadows just a smidge to bring out detail in the hair. LOVE the shot.
Thank you very much Robert for all your precious suggestions. Yes it was artificial light because he gave a talk on African politics and the picture was taken at the end when I went to introduce myself. Btw, the shirt was beige! I must get more confidence with bracketing and perhaps dare to use the internal flash. The external one would require too much time and the help from someone. Thank you again!
A very nice subject for your portrait. Using available artificial light for a portrait is always dicey. But particularly for such a dark skinned subject. It seems that people have give you some very good ideas. Most in regards to how to fix this particular photo using editing programs. But there are some things you can do in the act of photographing itself. First, regarding any problems with the color of the shirt, this looks like it was shot in tungsten lighting. While some editing programs can fix this, you might want to check the color temperature setting of your camera. If you had it set to automatic, and his white shirt came out this yellow, then the automatic color balance setting of your camera has let you down. It is likely that this photo was shot under tungsten lighting, which has a warm color temperature than daylight. Thus it turned his white shirt to yellow. To deal with this problem, if you know you are going to be shooting under tungsten light set the color temperature (white balance) setting of your camera to tungsten which is the icon of a standard lightbulb. That should keep the colars true under tungsten lighting. @domenicododaro gave you good advice regarding exposure. You should try to add more light to your exposure. That is one way of dealing with the problem. But I have several friends with similar skin color to your subject, and I find that one f/stop is the minimum amount of exposure that you would want to add. I think that you might be happier closer to two stop more light. You could accomplish this using your camera's exposure compensation +/- feature. Or you could bracket the exposures as Domenic suggested. And,while for many situations, bracketing plus or minus one stop of exposure is a viable strategy. In this case, you main concern is lightening your subject dark skin. So bracketing minus exposure would be pretty fruitless, because it would only darken the your subject's skin. If you wish to try bracketing the exposure for this, or similar subjects, I would try bracket at 0, +1, and +2 stops of exposure. That will give you this exposure plus two lighter exposures, as opposed to one lighter and one darker. Another possible solution would be to try changling the metering setting on your camera. It is likely on the center full frame setting, which picks an exposure that balance the light for the full frame. You might want to try the spot meter, or center weighted setting. Then press your shutter button half way down while your subject's face is in the center of the frame. Then keeping the shutter release depressed half way, re-compose your photo and press the shutter release fully. That should expose the photo properly for the skin tone of your subject. If,for any reason that technique doesn't work, you can always try exposure compensation or bracketing. But do try to get your subjects so top lighting, if possible.
If there's one thing I hate, it's people who speak English as a second or third language who have a larger English vocabulary than I do. I had never heard the word "profluvium" before. So I looked it up. And it turns out that the website Dictionary.Com had never heard of it either. And while I would have loved to content myself with the thought that you made it up, I did search further and found the definition on Merriam-Webster. In future, when making your word choices, I would only beg you to remember that you are dealing with a simple American from the West San Fernando Valley. Not even a denizen of the Los Angele Basin. Mille grazie.
October 25th, 2018
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