Composite Portrait of Lori

Thought I'd do another of Lori. I really need to find more people for portraits so, if anyone in the Windsor area likes getting their picture taken let me know at craigspics.tk@gmail.com and I'll write back with more details. So back to this post, not much more to say here. This is the same set up as the other post of Lori and her dog. Of course as you can see the background is of the Detroit river done in HDR and processed in photomatix pro.

Selfie Portrait

Ok this is one I did of myself. I usually don't like doing pics of myself but at the time I was bored and had no one to tie to a chair. This was taken a few months ago and I figure I'd post it. The background is in HDR and under Ouellette ave. in Jackson park, Windsor Ontario. This was three lights and don't ask me what I was trying to say with this one. Just thought a little attitude would look interesting.

3 and 4 edge light photos

This is my niece Lori. It's who we decided to spend new years eve with. So while everyone had a few drinks i set up my lights and took some photos. I use 2 small softboxes, one on each side and a little behind the subject and a umbrella, i think it's around 36 inches as a shoot through up above the camera and another smaller umbrella below aiming up from the floor, now this smaller umbrella I usually use for fill also but for under the chin like a butterfly lighting but here i used it for the lower half of her body since in this case i used a wide focal length lens (10mm) and aimed it down and above her. I did not bring my background stand, It would not fit to well in their living room. I also don't mind the lights in the photo because i remove the subject and place them in another background and in this photo of Lori i just made a white background in photoshop and placed her in it. The only thing i had to do was ad a little shadow near her feet also done in photoshop.
Now for her dog Gemma i used the same setup only my stands that i use will only go down so far so i had to aim them downwards and i only used the large umbrella in front for fill, then there's the fact that the dog did not want to stay still so having her in the exact spot was impossible, this was the best shot that worked ok with the lights. Then of course in photoshop i placed Gemma in an HDR background that i took last summer downtown Windsor and processed it in photmatix pro. I guess I should ad that i use Yongnuo YN-560 II portable flash units triggered from camera with a flashwave II wireless radio save to one flash unit and the others trigger from the built in optical slaves which work very well and have not misfired yet in about eight months i've had them.
The lens for Lori was the Sigma 10-20mm f4-5.6 lens and for Gemma was a Sony 18-55mm kit lens, Sony alpha 580 camera, both photos 1/125 sec. f8 100 ISO.

I would like to ad one more important fact, when usually I use a wide lens with someones face close to the lens which destorts and whatever is closest to the lens looks larger, I use the liquify tool in photoshop to shrink the nose back to a more normal look. Click on the photo and look at the unfinished and finished photos to see the difference.

   This is the original photo only with the skin retouching done.

Original photo

The background