Hi, I am new here but have been taking photos for a little bit. This picture is of my Dad and dog in my back yard. I used photoshop to put real blacks and whites. Thanks.
Welcome.
Looks like you posted several new threads to critique today.
Generally you should post only one new topic daily. Its fine to post a new thread with 2-3 related photos to critiique/compare.
I'll offer some detailed feedback on this one, since this is where you started and I think there are a number of points to make.
BTW, I dont understand your comment about blacks and whites. Are you saying you used the sliders in levels and brought them to the beginnings of the light and dark info to improve contrast? If so, good move.
Subjects are nice, meaningful to you, so improving the capture should be quite helpful.
1. You have eye contact with your Dad. Good. Ideally you'd have the dog making eye contact as well.
2. Lighting is not so great. Deep shadows across the dogs head, strong light across your father's right cheekbone.
3. Posing would work better if your father's head and the dogs were closer, both looking at you. It's better to shoot at eye level, rather than looking up in a portrait.
4. Background is not helping here. Your father has a strange tropical fungus emanating from his back and requiring considerable surgery (watch out for trees, branches, telephone poles, wires, lights by the heads). The fence does not add to the image, although it gives personal context.
Suggestions:
Put the dog in your Dad's lap, call the dog or snap your fingers or show a treat, etc as you get your Dad to smile and get ready to shoot.
Depending on the distance between the subjects, you may need to shoot a bit more stopped down for full DOF. Perhaps f 8-11.
Watch the lighting, consider fill flash.
Take them out to a lawn or field with grass, bushes, maybe trees in the far distance to get a soft, non-distracting backgrond with appropriate context.
Agree with sbeme - needs better exposure (use fill flash) , better background (distracting) and better framing of the dog (not framing through paws or body unaturallly).
The best way to achieve this is to find a shaded spot (or later hour) and turn on your flash. Shaded will take away the squint.
