That was the “low quality” version of the video, which can be produced in any length for free if you’re an educator or student under Animoto’s “free for education” program.  I paid US$5 to download a high-quality version of the video for the actual presentation, as well as an ISO which can be burned to DVD.

The big breakthrough with this image was that I’ve finally mastered hair masking after having serious issues with hair masking in the first images of this series (which I may go back and redo now that I have the technique mastered ).  If you zoom in on the hair in this image, you’ll see that every strand has been flawlessly masked onto the new background using the tutorial I previously linked to.

Exposure Data
Exposure: 1/125 sec.
Aperture: f/2.8
Focal Length: 50 mm (Canon EF 50mm f/1.4 USM lens)
ISO Speed: 400
Lighting: Flat light/beauty portrait setup.  Tungsten studio light on left diffused through large diffusion panel for full-length diffuse light.  Tungsten studio light through tall, rectangular softbox high on right for  full-length light from right, but mostly illuminating face.

I think having a foreground element – like the rock on the left of this image, or the park bench behind the subject in “I Forgot…” – makes a big difference in reducing the appearance that the models have been Photoshopped onto a background.  I’m thinking of adding a railing behind the image with a view over the Blue Mountains; and some other forground element behind the forest image, to see if these (compositionally) tie the last two images together more.

Exposure Data
Exposure: 1/40 sec.
Aperture: f/2.8
Focal Length: 50 mm (Canon EF 50mm f/1.4 USM lens)
ISO Speed: 800
Lighting: Subject was lit by candle; a tall, diffuse soft box was used on the right for fill so that the light from the candle wouldn’t seem to harsh on the subject’s face.  The original capture colours were tweaked a little during post-processing to reduce the difference in light temperatures between the candle flame and the tungsten fill light.

Unfortunately, “attractive” is not so very far from “common” – we’re bombarded with images of attractive people all the time, and often they’re lit with diffuse “beauty” lighting, just the same as the way I’ve shot my models.  So it’ll be a challenge to see if I can make any of the remaining images as interesting as my first one.

The first of the “beautiful” images was hand-masked.  I can’t tell you what a horrible time I had hand-masking the hair on this one, but it’s still not perfect and I’ll try to revisit it to polish it up before I have to submit it next week.  I actually did this image twice – the first one I did was on a very serene and, well, boring background and couldn’t display next to “I Forgot…” without looking like a poor effort.  So I recomposited it on a more dramatic nature background:

The model has been positioned with her head in front of the brightest part of the sky, and I’ve added a lens flare behind her head so that it appears that there’s a bright light source behind her, forming a “halo” around her and achieving the goal I set out in my project proposal, to make my subjects look like sources of light.

Exposure Data
Exposure: 1/125 sec.
Aperture: f/2.8
Focal Length: 50 mm (Canon EF 50mm f/1.4 USM lens)
ISO Speed: 400
Lighting: Flat light/beauty portrait setup.  Tungsten studio light on left diffused through large diffusion panel for full-length diffuse light.  Tungsten studio light through tall, rectangular softbox high on right for  full-length light from right, but mostly illuminating face.

After that horrific time with the hair in that last shot, however, I realised that there had to be an easier way to mask hair. I mean, you see it in magazines all the time for goodness sake – so I did a search on the web.  The best and most popular method involves shooting the model on a high-key (white) background, then using an Overlay brush on a copy of the image to get a near-perfect mask, even with fine detail like hair.  It certainly seems to work a lot better (and possibly faster) than hand-masking.:

I’ve also hand-shaded the model’s clothing so that it looks almost like she’s standing in a pool of light coming through the trees, with the upper part of her body and her head in the light.  In a dim, cool forest, a lens flare would be out of place, so positioning her head in front of the brightest part of the background image creates a very subtle suggestion of a “halo” around her.

Exposure Data
Exposure: 1/60 sec.
Aperture: f/2.8
Focal Length: 50 mm (Canon EF 50mm f/1.4 USM lens)
ISO Speed: 200
Lighting: Flat light/beauty portrait setup.  Tungsten studio light on left diffused through large diffusion panel for full-length diffuse light.  Tungsten studio light through tall, rectangular softbox high on right for  full-length light from right, but mostly illuminating face.

It’s titled “I Forgot…” and it features the subject holding a lit bulb, while behind him an image of a bleak and lifeless cityscape illustrates the possible consequences of carelessness…

Click the image to go through to its Flickr page to view it in high resolution.

Composition notes:
I’ve placed the subject off-center in accordance with the Rule of Thirds, balanced by the background light in the opposite third quadrant. The subject is looking into the middle of the image which looks more correct than if he were on the right of the image looking out of it. The grey park bench adds to the feeling of urban starkness, which carries into the bleak cityscape in the background.

Composite elements:
Park Bench (CC BY SA): www.flickr.com/photos/yourdon/2549132011/
Background (CC BY): www.flickr.com/photos/sailorganymede/2795285309/

Exposure Data
Exposure: 0.04 sec (1/25)
Aperture: f/1.4
Focal Length: 50 mm (Canon EF 50mm f/1.4 USM lens)
ISO Speed: 1600
Lighting: Low-light shot: could only use a single light to give the effect that the light bulb in the hand was the only light source in the image foreground.  1x Tungsten studio light with snoot from left of camera directed onto bulb.  Intentionally no fill light on right as a harshly lit effect was desired.

• Thousand Portraits
• One Thousand Portraits

The simple answer to all of the above is: I’m doing “post-production” of all of the images from the portrait shoot: selecting the best images, adjusting the colour in each photo by changing settings in the RAW (”digital negative”) files, composing and cropping each image so that it looks its best, and “Photoshopping” each portrait so that each model looks flawless.   A recount of my photos puts the total at just under 800 images altogether.. and this translates into a LOT of work!

So bear with me while I go through this lengthy and gruelling post-production phase.  This is, really, the critical stage that turns good photos into extraordinary ones; and having put so much work into taking the photos, I’m determined to do the very best job I can at finishing them properly.

• 8 models (6 girls, 2 guys)
• 1 hour to set up
• 2.5 hours to shoot
• 2 separate sets:
  • a high-key set with two diffuse modelling lights, primarily geared for “beauty” shots; and
  • a low-key studio flash key light/back light set, primarily geared for “dramatic” photos.
• Hair by Sheryn from Hair in the City; Make-up by Kim Balaga.
• Took over 500 photos, in 22 megapixel RAW and low-res JPEG.
• That’s over 18GB of image files.

Un-Photoshopped image taken on the “dramatic” set.

I’d like to recommend my hair and make-up professionals to anyone looking for awesome stylists.  They were promptly on time, treated my models (who are my friends, so this was important!) well by all accounts, and did a fantastic job.  Thank you, Sheryn and Kim!

Un-Photoshopped image taken on the “beauty” set.

And thank-you to my models -my friends-, who volunteered for this to help me with my assignment and were awesome sports, even when I ran out of time (and memory cards! ) towards the end of the shoot and couldn’t photograph them in as many outfits as I would have liked.

Next step is to comb through the images, cropping, processing, and editing!  To achieve the results I’d like for my assignment, I’ll need to photo-composite a few of my best studio shots onto various backgrounds.  I did one for fun in about 10 minutes this morning.

So the work’s not finished yet – but at least this next stage should be a lot less pressure, and quite a bit of fun.

Finally, extra thanks to Red and Judy for easing my post-shoot nerves with a couple of first-class scotches.  You guys always seem to know just how to make everything better.

• I’m going to shoot from further away from my models, whenever I can.  This is for two reasons: firstly, it will give my photos a flatter, more flattering (no pun intended) perspective; and secondly, it will allow a more forgiving depth of field.  This handy Depth-Of-Field calculator shows that using a 50mm lens at f/1.4, from a distance of 2m, gives me only 13cm of acceptably sharp depth of field (much of which will be slightly blurred and out of focus).  These are the settings, and the distance, at which I’ve been shooting most of my previous portraits, so no wonder I’ve had trouble getting the eyes in focus!  At a range of 3m, the acceptable DOF more than doubles to 30cm, making it possible to focus close to the eyes and get them sharply in focus in the shot.
• I’m going to be shooting with a narrower aperture – NO WIDER THAN f/2.8.  Again, this is for two reasons.  Firstly, an aperture of f/1.4 contributes to the unforgivingly tight depth-of-field mentioned above.  Shooting two stops narrower (f/2.8) at a distance of 3m gives me an acceptable depth-of-field of 60cm – which should give me nice, sharp facial details.  Should I desire a blurrier background, I can always add extra blur in Photoshop later; but I cannot bring back detail lost due to shots being out of focus.  Secondly, although the lens I’m using, a 50mm f/1.4 prime, is optically excellent, it suffers from some documented sharpness and flare issues between f/1.4 – f/2.2.  So shooting with the aperture narrower than f/2.8 will avoid those optical limitations and result in sharper images.
• I must remember to remove my protective filter this time.   Although it has no explicit optical effect, it is another piece of glass for light to pass through, and has caused flaring and ghosting with some night shots in the past.  Removing the filter removes a potential cause of problems.
• Attention to detail! If there’s one thing my first portrait session taught me, it is that every tiny detail shows up in these photos.  The smallest hair or shadow out of place can ruin the portrait!  So I’ll be much more careful with composing and taking my shots this time around.
• More creative lighting and posing. I was very, very conservative with my lighting in my first photo shoot (where I basically stuck with a Hollywood/on-axis formula), but subsequent sessions have taught me to be more creative, and that experimentation can yield some fascinating results.
• Shoot in RAW. It’s better than JPEG. ‘Nuff said.

There’s a truckload of stuff to do tonight:

• Make sure all my batteries are charged, my memory cards are clear, and all my equipment is working perfectly (e.g. lens, viewfinder and menu screen clean!).
• Make sure all my equipment is packed, ready to go (including battery chargers – just in case).
• Write up my final shot list, keeping all my “lessons learned” in mind!
• Make up some platters of food to keep my models fed and occupied while I’m shooting.
• Keep reading through the portrait photography books and magazine articles I’ve been collecting, so that hopefully some of the advice will seep through into my subconscious.

I am nervous as all heck.  Keep those fingers crossed for me!!!!

• Straight on: an equal relationship between the viewer and the subject
• Slightly above: can make pleasing shots, as the eyes appear larger.  The sitter can appear passive or (with extreme use) submissive.
• Slightly below: subject appears dominant, important, or confident.  Needs to be used with care, though – it can also make the subject look scary!

[Photoanswers]