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Just to clarify...
Not my son. I shot this for a neighbor family.
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Just a few I've processed...
I can't seem to get Lightroom to process how I need it to or want it to, so I keep going back to Photoshop and running some stupid actions, and then backing WAY off the saturation and 'pop' layers to the tune of 0% saturation and 10% pop. I also started this session at 6:30pm, which clearly was FAR to early. The shot of the boy in the chair was done right at the end, about 7:30pm, which is probably when I should have started!
I'm starting to believe that 2 hours before sunset sucks and that it really needs to be 1 - 1.5 hours before sunset, TOPS!
I like how a lot of them have turned out. But my goal is to get away, far away from having to run a bunch of actions on every shot because, well, it's very time consuming and I'm trying to avoid the fake look.
Thoughts here please? Be gentle...
Edited by mrpeepers on May 08, 2008 at 08:46 AM GMT
Edited by mrpeepers on May 08, 2008 at 08:51 AM GMT
I'm not the best person to be critiquing any photos. I really like the shot of your son -- the lighting is stellar. I like the last two shots as well (I like the last shot the best of the two), but I do think they would benefit from a shallower DOF -- to blur the background and keep the focus on the subjects. This is more my style, though. I think there were two ways to go. Keeping the background in focus tells me that the backgrounds is pretty important to the photos. If that is the case, then keep it that way -- but perhaps include more of the background to give the viewer a sense of where the mother and son are. Or you could use a wider aperture and crop a little tighter and bring the focus on the two. Your call.
You mentioned blown highlights on the last photo. I imagine that an off-camera flash to your right (subject's left) could add a smidgen of fill, giving you a better lighting ratio and allowing you to take the highlights down a notch without losing detail in the shadows. I haven't used any off-camera flash, though, so that's what I THINK would work.
all in all, I like the pictures. I think the lighting brings the viewer's eye to the subjects. If you could darken the rocks, it may pop even more.
No advice on processing. I try to shoot everything as close to perfect as possible in-camera because my computer is SLOW so I do nearly all editing in lightroom. maybe try the beta 2 version for edits in specific places?
Thanks Deb... I actually had the fstop set to 8 on those because in earlier photos, which I haven't put up yet, I needed the great depth of field and I forgot to drop it back down... Chalk that up to inexperience! I'm definitely going to see what I can do about making that background less distracting. You can't see it, but in the 2nd and 3rd photos there was a guy watering his lawn.
A few thoughts - in #1, portrait orientation would further reduce the background showing and include his feet.
#2 is a nice 'moment' captured. You could crop inwards on this one. The border on the left and right is not needed. The yellow garment (?) is distracting, so crop some off the bottom till the bottom part of it is gone.
#3 Consider making this a portrait oriented shot by cropping lots on our right. His face being hidden detracts, but her smile is very nice.
In #2 & #3, try to work with Photoshop to subdue the highlights and reduce the exposure. I assume you shot in RAW and have PS. The exposure,recovery and fill light sliders will be helpful.
The best cure is an ounce of prevention: keep the direct sun off the faces of the subjects. Backlight + flash fill is much simpler to pull off within the limited DR of a digital sensor.
To deal with what you've captured here try this approach. Open in Adjustments >Hue/Saturation and adjust the Red channel, which is clipping in the skintones:
