Advice on improving portraits

I normally shoot animal portraits, but now I am trying to venture into the world of people portraits. I just got my strobes not to long ago and the following is my first attempt at portraits. Any constructive critisicm would be greatly appreciated. I have also been trying to figure out how to get that soft glamour look, I gave it a try but I have to admit I really don't know what i'm doing when it comes to this look. Thank you

A couple of things...

1) Convert to sRGB before posting, it helps a lot in terms of getting consistent colors accross browser platforms
2) The White Balance looks really off, was this intentional?
3) Blown highlights are usually a big no-no. Were those intentional? If so, why?

4) The pose is a bit blocky, a head tilt and a slightly higher camera angle would be some things to consider
5) I'd like to see a lot more light in the eyes.

I'm not really sure what you mean by soft glamour look but you can try putting a softbox very close to the subject (like 18-24") and see what that gets you.
-Kent

Hi kent

Thank you for your advice. I agree about the things that you said. I am trying to get more light into the eyes, but I had to pose her on the floor and my strobe will only go so low. And I fixed the wb in DPP, I think. I placed the wb at about 5600 k, I believe this is the temp of alien bees. I have posted the same photo with out any other ps adjustments, it is also set to neutral portrait style. Mabye some one could take this photo and post process it and let me know what they did.

Quick edit:



Original:



here's a link to the psd file if you have Photoshop and you can see exactly what I did.
http://www.johnsonphotographic.com/dpreview/107323851-M.psd
Cheers,
-Kent

Thank you very much Kent. That is exactly the look that I wanted. Did the white balance look better on the second image that i posted.

Hey Kent

I am sorry to keep bothering you, but I opened up the file in photoshop but I can't seem to find out what you did. What is the best way to see this.

Thanks

Just look at the layers tab. You should see two more layers.

I added a levels layer and basically selected the tip of her nose as the white point and the dark area under her arm as black. Then I dragged the middle slider to 1.43 (as you should be able to see) I then duped the main layer, gaussian blurred it by 4 pixels and set the opacity to 32% I think. Then I erased the chin line, nose shadows, and other edges of the blurred layer.
That's it. Took about 20 seconds.
-Kent

Thank you so much Kent. My last question is what do you mean when you say erase the chin line and nose shadows. Do you mean that you don't want any of the blur to go outside of the face. Thanks.

That's hard to answer. Anything goes, actually. It depends upon the effect you want. If you want a glow effect, then the edges should be left alone. If you want to soften skin and shadow transitions but skip the glow effect, then you have to be more selective and take things like edges into account.
Season to taste, as they say.
-Kent