Critique Self Portraits - A First Attempt

[WaltonR]

I got inspired after watching Glynn Dewis on YouTube showing how to take portraits and getting a black background even in daylight.
Well it wasn't exactly daylight. In fact it was in the bedroom with the light on and without a willing sitter, so it had to be a self portrait session.
The set-up was a single Elinchrom D-Lite RX 2, fitted with a snoot, my D850 on the tripod with remote shutter release.
Following Glynn's advice I stopped the camera down until I got a black image without the flash, then set the flash to light my face.
Not sure if I got it right but here's some of the better ones from the shoot.
Oh, and I was going for a mix of facial expressions. Some work and some... well erm...
Any critique, good or bad, would be very much appreciated.

1)
(2 of 53).jpg by Richard Walton, on Flickr

2)
(16 of 53).jpg by Richard Walton, on Flickr

3)
(38 of 53).jpg by Richard Walton, on Flickr

4)
(51 of 53).jpg by Richard Walton, on Flickr

5)
(47 of 53).jpg by Richard Walton, on Flickr

Many thanks for looking.

 

[Deleted member 95430]

1 and 2 probably the best for me, interesting light and good poses - but i love the rest as thats what we should all do, experiment over and over to see what does and does not work!

 

[Harlequin565]

Hi Richard, it's hard to give critique without knowing what you were trying to achieve - so everything from here on is subjective! Hope I didn't come across as too picky!

I find a snoot to be quite a hard light and it's very good for dark & moody portraits, so blacking out the background works well here. This is something that's relatively easy to do with something like a snoot as there is less spill to light up the background, so you can get away with letting a lack of light blacken things down.

#1 doesn't work for me, as there is no eye contact, and your head isn't at complete right angles to the camera, so we can see a bit of your right eyebrow and your ear is appearing out of nowhere. I also find the white stripes on your top a little distracting.

#2 is pretty good. No distracting lines, and a closer crop, with softer shadows. I like how the (camera) right hand side falls off into shadow and would be interested to see what it looked like in even more darkness. The square on look is ok, but just having a slight angle to your collar bone so that your head is twisting a little would improve it in my opinion. Almost have a catchlight in the eye which is nice too.

#3 & 4 Don't work for me due to expression, glasses (the "double ear" thing going on in the (camera) left lens is distracting) and head tilt. Also the slightly lighter background, white stripes and disembodied ear.

#5 is my 2nd favourite due to the expression which suits the lighting really well. Maybe a slight drop of the head and (as in all of them) a "shoulders back" so that you don't look like you're slouching.

Either way, this is a good effort for selfies. It's a massive pain to keep checking to see how you're doing, and having a model is a huge help! Back & forth to the camera means the light is always in a slightly different place (unless you were on a chair?) and it does add unnecessary difficulty. The benefit is that you can try all sorts of different expressions and head angles to get something that works, which will really help when you have a model in front of you to direct.

Consider mixing things up with a variety of props (scarves, shades, hats etc) and it would be interesting to see them in black & white with a bit of contrast pushed up. My wife is always more willing to mess around as a model if she can hide behind shades. Also I wondered what #2 would look like done again with the light pushed even further round so it's almost at 90 degrees to you to try and get half the face in shadow.

Well done for having a go though! If this was a first attempt it's a pretty good effort. And as a lesson in black backgrounding I think you've got the hang of it.

 

[WaltonR]

Thanks for the in depth critique. It's given me some food for thought.
I certainly agree with your comment regarding the white stripes on my collar. I tried, in some, to darken those out using linear or brush adjustments in LR.
Really appreciated.

 

[juggler]

cor, snoots and self portraits are annoying, well done!

I'd like to see the light a fraction lower to get a tiny bit more into the eyes - which are naturally slightly hooded - & maybe a catchlight in those where there isn't one.

 

[Pitter]

Very well done.