A few portraits I took a couple weeks ago are attached to the cover story from this week's issue of BusinessWeek. As usual, I like to show you the results and the uncropped original files. By the way, the second guy lives in Richard Avedon's old house.
Bill, fine portraits. Can you tell us the setup?
Can you comment on the cropping of the first photo? It appears a little odd that they cropped the hands. Did you do a wider shot to allow better cropping of the hands? Given the resolution of the 5D Mark II, are you concerned that the designers will crop in further because they have more latitude with the high resolution?
Finally, did the bottom button being undone on the suit jacket bug you later?
Both of these were a single speedlight I think. Meg holding it and shooting though a diffuser as an ad hoc softbox. The top shot it's just above and to camera right. The bottom shot is ambient light from the sky way above the courtyard, with the speedlight directly to his right to give a little dimension to his face. I also shot a bunch of two light stuff too, but these are the ones they chose.
Personally, I would have cropped the top a bit to make it fit and leave the walls on either side of him so as to frame it pretty much as I shot it. But that kind of control is what you give up when you're working for a magazine. I think it would have looked better with more space around him, but that's not my call.
Yes, the mark II has pixels to spare often, but I don't think that's the concern of the designer, I think he thought it looked better tighter. Again, I disagree, but you could have done the same crop on the old 5D and been fine too. I've done 45x30" prints from the 12MP 5D and they looked pretty damn good.
And no, the button didn't bother me. Stuff like that is important for fashion and advertising.. for editorial, I think little mistakes make the photos more interesting.. give them a little character.
Thanks for that info Bill. My concern is that the designers will take a mid-shot and turn it into a close-up because you have enough resolution to still make it work as an A4 @ 300dpi.
Agree with you on the button, I just wanted to hear your thoughts!
Even if that were true, there's not much I could do about it. ;-)