I just wanted to share this portrait I made to this man an his 2 sisters.
It was shot in the studio with basic lighting I use.
4x6 Chemera Softbox, metalic reflector as fill light, one kicklight with bastard amber gel, and a background light with an orange filter.

Aloha Carlos!

Nice portrait! I like the expressions and the pose, and the lighting.

I wonder if you are burning the vignette in...it looks like you are because it kind of traces the heads in the image. Personally I think the background light should be lowered so it doesn't light up the background above their heads. Just above the shoulders looks better in my opinion.

And I have to say that whatever that is between the man's legs bothers me. It's lighter than his pants and draws the eye.

One other thing, I know you do retouch, and I bet the sister on the left side of the image would appreciate it if you were to remove the little overhang of her skin below her arm and just above the dress line. You can easily do that using the clone stamp and cloning the background to make her body line run smoothly from arm to dress.

A Hui Hou!

Hi Stan,

Yes you're right, the vignette is burned in but in this case the sillouete is from the background since it;s painted with dark and light spots, being the lighter in the center. It oes look as if I dodged around the heads.

thanks for the tips, I will lower the background spotlight on my next session.

We do retouch the large portraits and a just minor retouching on the 5x7 and so, but this image I grabbed it from the 5x7's that were waiting to be printed.

Sometimes though, we do retouch a little more on the smaller pics without charging extra to give a little something extra that other studios in our area don't.

Thanks,

P.S. By the way, I went to Hawaii when I was 18, Now that I'm married with two kids, I want to make a trip again to Hawaii, my wife has never been there.
I'll come by and say hello if you don't mind.
I haven't planned the trip so I don't know when.


Carlos