Having become interested in upping my skill in taking portraits, I cornered Paul Barr to pose for some while we were at the Shisendo Temple (詩仙堂) yesterday (a wonderful place Damien Douxchamps introduced me to in a visit last week, a few photos from which made it to this post).

I brought my laptop with these photos to A's Bar, a hole-in-the-wall restaurant/bar with really excellent food (try the udon and avocado/salmon salads), and processed them with Paul. The limitless artistic directions that Lightroom affords meant we went round and round with each photo, but in the end is seems [...]

You might not particularly notice it the first time you see the photo above, but once I point it out, you won't be able to miss it: my skin has a decidedly green tint.

質が悪い蛍光灯を使うと、肌は緑ぽいになってしまう。

This is a classic side effect of fluorescent lighting not specifically designed for photography, which is apparently what Stéphane and I used during one of our portraiture practice sessions.

Unfortunately, I had bought bulbs that were specifically advertised as "for photography", sold and branded by a company that makes photo-studio lighting equipment. I simply got ripped off. )-:

I'd bought Gorgeoust (the company's name) "Super [...]

My previous post presented 15 different versions of the same portrait photo, concentrating on the technical side of the wide breadth of processing that I could achieve with Lightroom.

Prior to publishing that article, I'd asked my partner-in-portraiture-crime and the photographer of that shot, Stéphane Barbery, to come up with his own interesting versions of the photo. He doesn't care for the photo and so his normal processing on it would simply be to delete it, but explained that I was working on my own many versions and wanted his interpretations for comparison, so he kindly took a shot at [...]

A week ago, I posted about another portraiture practice session with Stéphane Barbery, but then I lost my computer to the repair shop for two days. I've gotten it back, but have yet to look at the photos of me that he took, beyond the first two photos.

I've not looked beyond the first two photos because I've been busy.... such as with the new Lightroom plugin that I released yesterday, and with another portraiture/lighting practice session on Monday with Stéphane... but the main impediment to me looking at the photos has been my Lightroom curiosity with the second shot [...]

As I've mentioned recently, I'm trying to get more skillful with formal portraiture, and to that end yesterday I had another practice session with fellow Kyoto resident Stéphane Barbery.

友達と一緒のポートレート撮影の練習、第二回目。前回と比べて、今回は道具は兆レーバルアっプしましたけれども、能力はまだまだです。 上は友達に撮ってもらった今回の僕です。

We had a ton of new lighting equipment but very little experience on how to use it, so our main goal was to just try all kinds of lighting setups to see what worked and what didn't work. I'll write more on that later.

We also tried to see what worked on the human level... there's so much more behind a good result than technical skill... you have to [...]