First, CONGRATULATIONS!!! That's fantastic.
Second, a nice sharp capture with a great expression, good choice of DOF, appealing lighting.
Third, before and after: The crop improves the image. The warming or selective bump of the reds seems fine, to a point. Her skin appears a bit to red to my eye. I'd do some selective adjustment across her skin.
Fourth, did I say Congratulations?
It's a cute shot of her face and the lighting on the face is very flattering. Congratulations on the cover.
But quite honestly my first reaction was that the face had been cut and pasted from another shot because her head seems larger and out of proportion with the size of her body and length of her arm and the head is twisted at such a severe unnatural angle to the shoulder line. On closer inspection I realized it was the result of the near/far size distortion which occurs when shooting close with a wide angle lens.
Given the tight crop on the left and bottom the first crop closer in on the right works better for me than the second with the space behind her. I would have liked to see the entire bottom foot and more space to the left for her to swing into.
In terms of processing, with shots taken under tress the light gets a green bias from the bouncing off the foliage which does odd things to skin and other colors. Skin in captured in RGB is more red that and + green makes it darker and duller. The remedy at capture is to set custom WB off a gray card. The camera will do a -green / + magenta compensation to capture neutrally. In PP you can normalize the color / contrast by using a magenta photo filter...
If you apply the correction then toggle before / after you will notice the difference. In that type of situation a gray card reference shot, even one taken afterwards, is very helpful allowing you to click correct on the card test shot then copy / paste the resulting correction to the other RAW files.
It's a wonderful photo. Compared to Hallmark's endorsement, our opinion hardly matters.
I guess you could back off the red just a smidge. I'm not saying it would be better, but I'd try a rendition with the corners burned in ever so slightly. A little vignetting might help emphasize the subject.
This is a great example of a photo where all the great elements trump small nits. I'm sure you would have preferred to get all of her feet in the frame, but that's really unimportant compared to having taken the photo at the absolute perfect moment.
It's amazing to see children's photos where the subject is so engaged with the photographer. Children are usually wonderful judges of character and you can see instantly when they are uncomfortable around someone. I see a lot of photos of children where you can tell that something isn't quite right. It's in their eyes.
In the 70's I met Bill Beale, photojournalist for one of the DC papers who had won a 1957 Pulitzer for this photo of policeman bent over to talk to a little boy at a parade....
@sbeme - Yes, good point, i'll try something like that. I liked the gold-ish tone the red bump gave but I do see now that it's a bit much for her skin, especially in the shadows.
@RustyBug - Thanks for the input.
@cgardener - Thanks for such a detailed post! That was one thing I was worried about - her body is in kind of a contorted position.
Here is another shot taken a few seconds before:
This shot was probably the second best but in this one I feel her arm is very prominent and takes the focus away from her face.
Also, this shot was not shot with a wide angle lens - but a long one. 180mm f2.8 on a crop sensor.
I've been planning to invest in a grey card, guess I probably should soon! Thanks for the color adjustment - I'm trying it now and it seems very natural.
@dmacmillan- Not totally true! I really value your opinions. The graphic designer actually sepia'd it, so my color edit didn't even mater, I'm just trying to perfect it for my portfolio.
Vignetting is also a good idea. I will try that.
I would have loved to get her all in the frame, I was burst firing shots of her as she was on a moving swing. The fact that I managed to get a few keepers was great. Not sure how this worked, but I told her "Kathryn! Model for me!" and she pulled all these poses on the swing. It was hilarious.
Thanks AuntiPode, great edit. I really like what you did with the greens. Looks much more lush and vibrant. I think I might play around with some selective darkening/vibrance.
I used the gamma slider on the exposure adjustment layer. No saturation or vibrance changes, as such. (I did slightly lower the saturation on her right arm after I increased the gamma. Increasing the gamma often seems to increase the effective saturation.)
Woo!
