Your opinions please (3 images)

MrGrumpy

MrGrumpy

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Paul
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I took some shots of a friend's children the other day whilst they were playing and I thought this one was a nice, natural candid shot, but couldn't quite decide how best to present it (see attempts below).

However, when I showed my wife, she just sort of shrugged and said it was OK :(


1. This is the full shot, colour-mixed to mono.
IMG_1586BWMedium.jpg


2. But I thought the following crop was better

IMG_1586BWMedium-1.jpg


3. And here's the crop but in colour.

IMG_1586Medium.jpg


I'm trying to increase my understanding of what makes a good photograph and iimprove my ability, so hopefully you'll throw in some opinions and constructive criticism.

Thanks

Paul
 
Hi Paul,

I quite like all 3, though I think the colour capture is best.

No 2 suffers from light reflection on the lower lip, which doesn't appear on the other two.

My feeling is that you've cropped too tight on all three, and have cropped the top of the head off.

If you had used a smaller aperture, the hand and finger would be in focus, and less distracting. I prefer anything OOF to be behind the POF, which I imagine in this case would have been the eyes.. You could use a smaller aperture quite happily indoor if you are using flash.

She's a preety wee thing.

Doug
 
Not bad at all really.

The eyes are a bit "scary" in the black and white versions. Looks a bit like "Chucky" :shrug:
Also her left eye is a little too shaded.
 
It's a real shame that you've cut the top of the head off - it's a nice shot and I think the oof hand works well. I prefer the crop leaving more space on the right. The only thing is that crop leaves you with an odd format which might be difficult to frame, but it should be easy enough to fudge a little more space on the right in processing to get a more usual format. :)
 
CT said:
It's a real shame that you've cut the top of the head off - it's a nice shot and I think the oof hand works well. I prefer the crop leaving more space on the right. The only thing is that crop leaves you with an odd format which might be difficult to frame, but it should be easy enough to fudge a little more space on the right in processing to get a more usual format. :)
Click to expand...

I agree with what CT has said, spot on. It really is a shame you can't see the whole shape of the head. I think it could possibly do with the smallest of WB tweaks? and a touch of levels. But not much just a touch.

I can edit one to show you?
 
Thanks for all your advice.

I am struggling at the moment to get the initial framing just right when doing close-ups (as you may have seen from a daffodil shot last week where I also cut the top off). I guess I should leave myself a bit more room for error when framing.

I've only got the on-camera flash at the moment so I'm trying to take natural light shots where possible which is why this is as wide as I could go without upping the ISO too much and that's why it's a little dark on her left. In this scenario with, for example, a 430EX what sort of flash arrangement would work best?

It's interesting the differing opinions on the OOF hand; personally I liked it. It's a shame I haven't got one of each to compare (but I think I was luck to get this one :) )

Ally - Feel free to tweak to show me.

Thanks again

Paul
 
MrGrumpy said:
Thanks for all your advice.

I am struggling at the moment to get the initial framing just right when doing close-ups (as you may have seen from a daffodil shot last week where I also cut the top off). I guess I should leave myself a bit more room for error when framing.

I've only got the on-camera flash at the moment so I'm trying to take natural light shots where possible which is why this is as wide as I could go without upping the ISO too much and that's why it's a little dark on her left. In this scenario with, for example, a 430EX what sort of flash arrangement would work best?

It's interesting the differing opinions on the OOF hand; personally I liked it. It's a shame I haven't got one of each to compare (but I think I was luck to get this one :) )
Ally - Feel free to tweak to show me.

Thanks again

Paul
Click to expand...

If we all agreed, what a boring world it would be.:D
 
First off just used the colour image to create this, to regain the top of the head

kid1.jpg


then merged with a desaturated layer to get a slightly muted colour palette which i thought was quite nice.

kid2.jpg


:)
 
Very quick play about tbh i prefer it with the hand in

kid3.jpg
 
Cor blimey!

It definitely looks better with the top of the head!!!

You're obviously pretty handy with PS. I'm not sure I'd be able to clone that part in on the original, but I'm going to have a try. How did you go about it?

Actually, the shot immediately before this one still has the top of her head, so I could try and copy that onto this one.

The muted colours version is also very nice, I'll show them to her Mum and see which she prefers.

Thanks again for all the advice.

Paul
 
I'd go with the very first image and crop even more off the top of her head.
The space to the left suggests someone is standing over there looking in the direction that she is pointing. The other tighter crops make me look at just her pointing at something, no interaction. My eyes go straight to that hand instead of her in her surroundings.

By cropping a bit more off the head, we're concentrated on her eyes and hand. I much prefer a harder crop than just a tickle of a head slice.

As is stands, the BW 1st shot shines out to me. Some tweaks on contasts and tones will bring it up a treat.
The colour ones to less for me.
As for destat versions. I do this with a duplicate layer, totally desaturated and then play with opacity, erasing areas where I do want a little colour ro come through, like the eyes, lips.

So yeah. for me. 1st shot, nice and wide, cropped a bit lower into the head.
 
I just increase the canvas size upwards and then use the clone tool to clone the background and everything upwards.

With the hair i just worked in the arc of the head cloning in and up to create the natural head shape, then you can get a paint brush with the background colour to shape it more acurately and a bit of blur tool to merge the backgound and hair cos it is out of focus due to the depth of field in this pic you have more leeway here.

To get the muted colour, i double clicked the background layer to make it editable, then duplicated the layer, so the copy was on top of the original, then desaturated the top layer and then if you right click the desaturated layer and go to blending options at the top you can leave the blending mode as normal but pick an opacity of about 60%.

This is adjusted to your preference how much or how little you choose dependant on the shot, you will see the change in realtime.

To remove the hand i copied the left half of the face to a new layer, flipped it and freetransformed it to roughly the right area on the other side of the face, then cloned and blended it in slightly.

I then used a layer mask to bring throught features from the original pic such as the hair, the eye, some of the shadow, then dodged and burned certain areas to alter the shadow and light areas so her face didn't look too much in shadow on that side.


I am sure someone with better ability than me could do better and given more time, the original etc, you could have many different options.

You have a really nice original pic which makes life 10 times easier as well. :)
 
Well, taking on board some of the advice from above, I've added the top of the head (from an earlier photo) and created some space to the right to try and create room for Mum (who she's pointing at).

I'm still undecided about colour or blank and white because, to a degree, I agree with oldgit about the eyes looking 'scary'. I've adjusted the colour balance on the colour version to try and get rid of the yellowish tint and reduced the saturation very slightly (but not as extremely as ppp did :))

I'n not sure about the very tight crop though - seems somehow claustrophobic.

Anyway, here are my latest attempts...

In Black and white

IMG_1586v3BWMedium.jpg


And in colour

IMG_1586v3Medium.jpg


Once again, thanks for looking and for your guidance so far.

Paul
 
fantastic, great job. personally i couldn't decide which i prefer and i'm sure her mum will love them both
 
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