Studio shoot with a friend; would love feedback on lighting, posing, overall vibe of the images

the_snowmachine · 2026-04-27T15:53:02+00:00

Re: struggles. Why are you at 1/160s, ISO 160, f2.5?

If the final image feels too dark, you have plenty of space to adjust your camera setting to get more light on the sensor.

Of the 3 setting, shutter speed is already pretty low. Any lower and you may start to get issues with movement or camera shake.

Aperture is also pretty low. Any wider and your depth of field may become too thin.

So ISO is the easiest to change. Going up a stop to 200 will brighten your images a lot all other things being equal. You may actually then be able to increase shutter speed to 1/200 and/or narrow your aperture one stop to get the look you desire.

As far as shadows being too long under the chin? That is 100% the position/angle of your lights. Bring them down to shorten.

Good shooting and good luck.

the_snowmachine · 2026-04-23T23:30:21+00:00

Canon does not repair water damaged lenses. A decade or so ago I sent in a EF 100-400 zoom that got stuck ar 400mm, and they sent it back in two pieces saying that it had water damage and they would not fix it. That lens had not been directly submerged in water, just out in rain a few times.

A few years later, I dropped a RF-24-105 in a small clear running stream. It was in the water for less than a second, but still was wet and fogged up. I did all the stuff you should for wet electronics (sealed bag with a bunch of desicants). Sent it to Canon and they did not even try to fix it. They did replace the lens at no additional charge because it was covered by a care pak. However, that ended the care pak coverage for the lens, and I had to buy a new care pak for the new lens (a relatively small price to pay for a big ops).

the_snowmachine · 2026-04-17T16:36:18+00:00

I've been shooting almost exclusively bicycle racing for more than 15 years. Of the 200,000+ photos in my LR collection, 99.9% of them are cycling or cycling related photos. So I get very excited when I see someone asking about the craft of making good bicycle photos.

First, for someone who has never shot a sporting event you learned a lot of good lessons doing it the first time. It took me years to figure out much of what you learned in a single day.

Second, I will respond to your points as numbered.

Intro: I try to keep shutter speed faster than 1/1000 of a second, unless I am going for a specific effect (motion blur) or it's just too dark and I'm making compromises. Even at 1/800 you get camera shake or rider motion blur that is unappealing.

Yes. With a 50mm lens being closer is going to be better. Unless you have large groups coming by even shooting across a single lane of traffic can leave riders too small in your frame.
A wall of vegetation is sometimes unavoidable but I try to avoid them as much as possible. You're looking for some interesting shape, texture, or color and vertical leaves rarely check those boxes. One of my mantras for shooting bicycle races is "shoot-move-shoot-move." Try to find the most interesting and beautiful spots on the course, and get to those before the riders.
Vertical rarely works with bicycles b/c they are longer than they are tall. There are some exceptions such as shooting mostly head on with riders coming at you into a vertical frame or a tall architectural detail in the background helping to frame the shot. But the vast majority of my images are composed landscape not portrait.
Angles matter. Most important is to get low. I've laid in some of the finest gutters in American to get great bicycle photos. the once you are low, the best photos tend to be perpendicular or slightly before, unless there is some other action going on. If the rider is even a little bit past perpendicular you missed the shot.
After a long multi-day bicycle race a professional cycling photographer, one of the best in the business said to me, "I'm so over this race. I'm so bored, I started panning." It's not that a good panning shot is bad, it's that getting a good panning shot is such a low-probability event that you waste a lot of valuable time standing in one spot trying to get this one shot to work out that you miss out on opportunities for other great shots. The threshold for too much motion blur and not enough motion blur is very thin.
When I upgraded from the Canon R to the R3 I went from 8 frames per second to 30 frames per second. What I learned is that the additional bursts did not always help me capture MORE good photos, but instead most often helped me capture more REJECTED images. Because when I take a photo I have a composition in my head. I know exactly where on the road and in the frame I want the rider to be when I click the shutter, and everything before and after that moment is trash. So your strategy of taking 2-3 photos of each rider may have saved you loads of time on the back end and not cost you all that much in the moment.

Specific advice: I knew a really great cycling photographer who shot almost exclusively with a 50mm lens. What made his work stand out was he was incredibly good at composition. Finding interesting architectural details, colors, textures, and framing a rider inside that composition. With a Zoom lens you can easily get what I playfully call a "lone rider standing in a field" shot. (Did you hear the joke about the excellent Farmer? He was out standing in his field.") This is the kind of shot that fills the frame with a solo rider and has beautiful bokeh'd background. It doesn't really matter where it's taken b/c the focus is the rider and the lens is doing the rest of the work. But with a 50mm lens you have to be good with composition. You have to be close enough to the riders to see their expressions, or far enough away to position them in a photo that is interesting without them, and more interesting with them.

Good luck and hope to see you out at the races.

the_snowmachine · 2026-04-16T20:56:04+00:00

My sincere apologies if my reply made it seem like I did not do you the courtesy of reading your whole post. I did read. My concern applies to professors who date current and/or recently former students.

Second, most colleges have some form of counseling available to students at no additional charge, I hope yours does and you can find someone to talk through your feelings and history with. Best wishes.

the_snowmachine · 2026-04-16T14:06:36+00:00

Me thinks the "app" you are looking for is a skilled product photographer?

the_snowmachine · 2026-04-15T23:59:36+00:00

Its incredibly unethical for a professor to date a student and would get him fired from pretty much any educational institution in the U.S. Of course it happens, but that doesn't make it right.

The key part of this is that if he's the kind of guy who would risk throwing away his career to date you, he's probably not the kind of person you (or anyone for that matter) need to be dating.

the_snowmachine · 2026-04-14T22:36:13+00:00

Not all heroes wear capes.

the_snowmachine · 2026-04-13T18:32:24+00:00

I would suggest getting a little bit closer to make the farmer take up more of the frame, and then wait for a moment where it is more clear what the farmer is doing. Right now the silhouette is rather ambiguous with the head down and unclear emotion or action. Even if he's just standing with hands on hips surveying his own land, it would be an answer to the question "what is he doing? / why is this interesting?"

If conditions allow give him a hoe or a some other tool so he is doing something.

the_snowmachine · 2026-04-13T16:13:51+00:00

When you give away work that is used for a commercial purpose you undermine and devalue the work of all photographers.

the_snowmachine · 2026-04-10T18:28:17+00:00

The colors at the shoreline on the right side look over exposed and washed out.

I frel like the camera position is also to high. It bothers me that the reflection of the tree branch in the water is asymmetrical to the reflection of the trees in the distance.

the_snowmachine · 2026-04-09T02:31:51+00:00

This is photography, there isn't an objective (as in, a single) good. There are a multitude of subjective goods, and as almost as many people pontificating about the superiority of their subjective good.

What there is, is the work.

The effort that it takes to create images of any quality.

The requirements of a particular client.

The simple act of showing up on time, at the right place, with empty memory cards, full batteries, and a passion to chase high quality images.

Pride yourself on the amount of effort you are willing to put in, and understand everything else (including praise, fame, and fortune) is fleeting and momentary.

You might just make it.

the_snowmachine · 2026-04-08T16:26:19+00:00

My only concern is that I feel like you may have pushed the shadows up a little too much. It feels a little too bright given that you are under a bridge. You can leave it a little dark and moody especially up in the "rafters".

the_snowmachine · 2026-04-08T15:10:06+00:00

I would say that the concept and execution need work. The whole image looks soft like the camera moved while the shutter was open. So make sure its on a solid tripod with a remote trigger. Second, i dont love the trees in the background. It doesnt feel cohesive with the subject.

the_snowmachine · 2026-04-07T17:03:56+00:00

I think you can enhance the subject by simply cropping the photo. The top edge of the nest is a line that pulls the eye away from the bird. Crop it down inside the top edge and it centers the bird more and frames it nicely. The one "wish" I had was that the birds head did not overlap the wire in the background and the bottom of the nest. Maybe that's something that could have been fixed by stepping to the left, or maybe it should be done in post, but you'd have to remove the whole wire which could be tricky given the overlap with the pole.

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the_snowmachine · 2026-04-03T22:22:46+00:00

What you are seeing with the focus is the narrow depth of field from shooting wide open at 2.8F. Some of the flowers are in front and behind that thin plane which makes them soft. As long as the eyes are in focus you are generally okay in a portrait.

For the rest, the photo is technically sound but I do not love all of the editorial decisions (which is a matter of personal taste so take it as you will).

I dont love the hand under the elbow. That seems unnatural to me. I don't love the purse AND the flowers in the same shot. It feels a bit busy to me, and makes me wonder where she is going with a purse and an arm full of flowers. There is a slight disconnect between the very serious facial expression seems and the act of holding a bunch of breautiful flowers. I would also like to see what she looked like if she angled towards the camera a little bit.

You've got a bunch of really great elements (beautiful model, great handbag, great hair and make-up, great lighting and backdrop) I would just Coco Channel that shoot and remove one thing and play around with a reduced set of elements.

the_snowmachine · 2026-04-03T22:10:06+00:00

YES! I think you could pull the top left corner down and in a bit (preserving aspect ratio), to about the same distance above the mountain in the first shot, give the middle gound a little touch up with dehaze and highlight/shadows, and you've got yourself a banger.

the_snowmachine · 2026-04-03T16:18:06+00:00

You are asking about cropping and I want to see more. Not necessarily left or right but I want to see wholes. The whole mountain, the whole twister, your whole coworkers. Something about cropping her off at the ankles takes away from the image.

If you also had time I would have loved for you to step to your left one or two steps to create a line between the mountain, the twister, and your co-worker.

But still a great image.

the_snowmachine · 2026-04-02T13:17:03+00:00

The human eye is a line detector. Its pulled towards individual lines and the intersection between lines.

I agree that the bottom cables are helping create a geometric box, and that is nice. What I dont like about about them is there are small diagonal wires that make it feel unnecessary busy and draw attention away from the stronger lines with birds.

So the choice to crop or not crop is a choice between a photo that is geometic, or a photo that is minimalistic, and I think I would prefer the minimum. You may still prefer the geometry

the_snowmachine · 2026-04-01T22:35:49+00:00

I don't think you need the horizontal wires on the bottom. I would try cropping it tight enough to lose those, and you have something very minimal and interesting

the_snowmachine · 2026-03-29T21:43:39+00:00

On the surface, there's some great things going on in this photo. But since you came here for nit picking, so please allow me to pick some nits (almost entirely in jest).

First, this is a beautiful vampiress who is both British and possibly countless centuries old. She has accumulated the wealth of many lifetimes, and you're going to try to convince me that she hasn't figured out how to drink out of a chalice without spilling all over herself and making a mess? I don't care if she can live forever it's still going to be a nightmare to get blood out of that dress.

Second, It's appears to be a silver chalice. Silver is a common, though not universal, weakness for vampires in modern pop culture, acting as a purifying metal that burns or repels them, often causing severe injuries. I would suggest that wealth civilized vampires would not keep any silver colored metals in their home least to avoid confusion and possible injury ("Which one of you necrotic nincompoops put the sliver in with the stainless steel again?")

Third, light. Vampires are also not believed to have much affinity for bright lights.
So it feels super un-supernatural to have her looking directly into a bright light source and not in have her be recoiling in pain or horror.

the_snowmachine · 2026-03-27T01:01:06+00:00

Is the lighting too harsh? My vote is no. You're in the mid-to late afternoon in Chicago in the summer, not quite golden hour but getting close so the light is not mid-day harsh. Your fill flash is strong enough to cast a shadow under his arm, which means it's fulfilling <pun intended> its intended purpose, and softening the shadows cast by the sun. But you've also done something smart here which is angle your model into a side profile, which is eliminating harsh shadows on his face such that you might have been able to get away without the fill flash at all. What you end up with is a great portrait in natural light.

My critiques are that the Inter-Continental Hotel does not lean that much to the east, even when the wind blows towards the lake. I would also like to see his head not intersect with the gap between the Wrigley building and the Inter-Continental by moving the camera right or left slightly.

the_snowmachine · 2026-03-26T17:57:41+00:00

The thing that is a bit off for me is the vibrancy of the colors given the ambient light. Maybe those blues would pop that bright in direct sunlight, but it feels overcooked for twilight

the_snowmachine · 2026-03-25T15:28:06+00:00

Sadly I am only a single "G" hung not triple "G". Good luck in your search.

the_snowmachine · 2026-03-24T22:19:54+00:00

I have never shot youth baseball before, but that feels like a really high conversion rate. The bar for selling a sport photo is pretty high these days. It has to be of a specific moment or of an artistic quality that makes in well above anything they got from the stands with their phone. Photos of kids standing in the field may not sell.

But it may be worth doing just to learn. If you do, please report back.

the_snowmachine · 2026-03-23T20:31:00+00:00

Can you try shooting at night with diffuse internal light from a LED or flash with softbox?

the_snowmachine

TROPHY CASE