A portrait of Yannick (on behalf of my daughter)

Here is a picture my daughter Ayla took today. She is quite interested in taking pictures of eyes. I thought that this portrait of Yannick was definitely worth sharing, what do you think?
PS: I did some minor skin blemish removal in CS4 and selective output sharpening on the eyes using Focus Magic.

(5DII, EF 50mm f1.4, ISO 100, f 5.6, 1/125s)




Cheers,

Hi Cem,

I'm so pleased to see more of Ayla's work. Here there are two things going for the image: the form and the look over the glass of tea. The colors don't flatter the subject and to my mind are distracting from the strengths. There are no such issues in the B&W derivatives.

Looking at eyes is a great theme to work on. Here the look back is tentative and sort of teasing. Ayla, I hope you'll do more. I will learn from your unique point of view!

Thanks for sharing,

Asher

Thanks Asher, I'll discuss this with her after her school today.

Cheers,

Looking through the glass

That Ayla is quite talented with a camera. At first look I liked this image but there were a few nits and one big nit.

I love her eyes. That is the stellar feature of this image. But studying it closely, there is some refraction and refleciton in the glass that detracted me. I think the added border on the iris of her eyes is too bold. That detracts for the great look of her eyes for me.

To punch it up, I'd do a little negative clairity in lightroom or some skin smoothing. Over all I like the feel of this shoot. Ayla could really advance hereself with photography - it wouldn't take much

Cem_Usakligil said:

Here is a picture my daughter Ayla took today. She is quite interested in taking pictures of eyes. I thought that this portrait of Yannick was definitely worth sharing, what do you think?

Click to expand...

Eyes are a good subject, and Yannick has nice blue ones with lots of detail in the iris. Due to the ambient light, the whites of her left eye looks much more red/orange than the other, I'd try to reduce the difference a bit in post processing. It also looks like you've got the AF microadjustment of your new lens pretty well figured out, and the bokeh is very pleasing. It might be interesting to see a crop of one eye, if she managed to nail the focus with your camera (at f/5.6 the f/1.4 model might even perform a little better than the f/1.2 lens, and AF is more reliable).

I don't know how much was cropped, but it looks like Ayla has a good eye (pun intended) for composition. One would expect a more central position of the eyes (if only for focus) but this crop works better.

Bart

Bart_van_der_Wolf said:

Eyes are a good subject, and Yannick has nice blue ones with lots of detail in the iris. .......

I don't know how much was cropped, but it looks like Ayla has a good eye (pun intended) for composition. One would expect a more central position of the eyes (if only for focus) but this crop works better.

Click to expand...

Bart,

Your emphasis on the blue and iris detail made me rethink my view on a B&W version. The value of losing the color is still valid especially for a small print, say 12"x6", for example. However, if this were printed really large, so that the blue eyes were still sharp and detailed with that great blue, the picture would get a new special value. Here, I think size matters.

Asher

Asher Kelman said:

Bart,

Your emphasis on the blue and iris detail made me rethink my view on a B&W version. The value of losing the color is still valid especially for a small print, say 12"x6", for example. However, if this were printed really large, so that the blue eyes were still sharp and detailed with that great blue, the picture would get a new special value. Here, I think size matters.

Asher

Click to expand...

It did and it does indeed . I have printed the picture at 8x10 and it is very good but it would be even better if printed larger. The color of the eyes is what makes this photo if you ask me so a B&W version is not in the making right now.

As Bart hinted at it, I have slightly cropped the picture, there was more of her forehead to be seen and some more empty space to her right.

I'll post a crop of the eye tonight when I get home. BTW, Bart is right re. the reddish tone in the white of her eyes. The ladies have had a big party the night before and were just recovering from it the day after, lol.

Cheers,