Reply To: Cliff’s Polybook

[Jonathan Lampel]

These are really good! 

1. The right side is just about perfect but could use a little more blue coming from underneath. I think this is supposed to be moonlight light reflecting off the water, so it’s very subtle and extremely soft. On the other side, part of what makes it interesting is the falloff across her jaw. Perhaps try and bright the light closer and make it much less bright (or use a spotlight with a good sized fade) so that it is strong right underneath the cheekbone but tapers off gradually and is gone by the time it reaches the corners of his mouth. 

2. This one is especially tricky, and I think you did a great job capturing a near-impossible situation. I think the light is a bit farther down since you can see it reaches her chin just a little but doesn’t reach the right side of her forehead. It also has an incredibly soft falloff. I think the only way to get that is to bring the light pretty close to the subject but make it fairly large. Notice how soft most of those shadows are. The light from underneath also highlights her chin a bit more but isn’t lighting up her neck. Implausible, but it works compositionally. 

3. You nailed the color choices here. I think there’s maybe a bit less contrast between the right and left sides in this one than you have, and also there’s less light from the environment coming from underneath (HDRIs tend to do that). The shadow underneath her jaw is a good gauge of where the differences are. 

3. Again, excellent use of color. The front light is perhaps a bit softer, but beyond that I think most differences are due to the extreme change in face shape and skin material which you don’t need to worry about. 

I love how different all of your references are and I think you nailed the exercise! Excellent work 👏👏