I thought I'd try something completely different with the help of the speedlight flashgun I borrowed from my colleague.
I follow the work of a pro portrait photographer on Facebook, and I saw a really nice studio shot she did with a model, just of his face but clearly with a big soft-box flash unit. I know this is very un-soft light but at least her photograph inspired me to try something different.
I am sat in my living room, in pitch darkness, flash under-exposed by 2-stops, manual settings, with a blanket hanging behind me to create the dark background.
I've got no flash equipment and haven't done anything like this since college. I had no clue then and none now. I know what images I like but i;d love to have some basic flash gear to try and do some proper portraits. This is technically quite poor but fun to do.
@frankhymus Franky, I looked at the shot on the LCD and saw that my eyes were completely lost and because I only had the one speedlight, decided that they would stay that way. I know about the eye light reflection and how vital it is but given how dark this is, and by no means a correctly exposed 'head-shot' if you will, I decided I would stick with it. Ad by radial filter, do you mean a radial blur? I don't really use any blur in PS. Could go back and try it though.
@stevecameras Just something as small as this, a matching slight highlight on the upper eye lid, might work. https://www.dropbox.com/s/o2r1rz7bvo5xzut/4967144_cfhlptz478_l%201.jpg. You must not have ACR 8.3/Lightroom 5.3. The radial filter is a new control where you can paint a circle/oval, but unlike the adjustment brush, it can grade whatever parameters you have sent from the center (max) out to the border (zero). Very useful to quick adjustments that don't have sharp edges.
@frankhymus Thanks for giving it a go Frank. It definitely changes the shot. I actually do have Adobe CameraRaw 8.3.0 but i have never really done anything other than use the crop tool or the gradient tool from the options along the top. Its normally just tweaks from the right-hand side menus. Ill have a look at what it can do...! I appreciate you pointing it out to me :)
