Hello all. I've been lurking for a couple of years but rarely post because my work is average at best. I guess I'll never improve if I don't get some constructive criticism and move on .
Below are the original and edited shots. The original is SOOC raw converted to Jpeg without any adjustments. I ran the edited version through Lightroom 4 and made some adjustments to temperature, exposure, shadows, white & black clipping, clarity, vibrance and sharpening.
I then went into Elements and cloned out a few stray hairs and cropped. I chose the close crop to use the hair as a border to frame her eyes.
Canon 5DII, 24-70 2.8 @ 70mm f 5.6 1/25 ISO 320 All natural light.
Looking at the original (without scrolling to see the edit), I had low expectations, but your edited version is nicer than I expected. I'm not a fan of the landscape framing, but the PP seems to be in the right direction. Eyes & lips seem to be a bit soft, with hair (forward) and nose seeming sharper ... thinking your focus point was slightly forward of eyes/lips.
All in all ... I think it shows the power of the "crop" and how important your PP skills can be to your imagery ... confirming the value of investing in study & practice @ PP. The original shot could have certainly been tighter composition and portrait orientation as well, imo ... but I think you've got the right spirit at striving to get better ... which will come with more study & practice.
You can't fix bad lighting and composition with post processing. It's like shooting yourself in the foot and putting a bandage over the wound. The better strategy is learn to handle the gun so you don't keep shooting yourself in the foot
Compostion: The camera has two modes called, landscape and portrait, for a reason: landscapes wind up better composed horizontally, portraits vertically.
Your shot has three neophyte mistakes: shot horizontally with the head dead center and subject flat-footed and square to the camera The result is a static looking composition with an awkwardly cropped body with too much unimportant background. To improve:
1 - Shoot in portait mode
2 - Put the eyes along the upper 1/3 of the frame
3- Crop at bottom along the small part of the waist \ /
4- Only include the background necessary for balanced composition.
5- Turn the subject at an angle to the camera and have them shift their weight to one foot /hip to angle the lines of the shoulders relative to the borders of the photo.
Lighting: If the subject is looking at the camera and viewer of the photo you usually want good light in the eyes. Then so nothing distracts from the eyes and mouth you want to keep the nose shadow as light and non-distracting as possible.
In most situations both natural and indoor lighting comes from so far overhead that eyes will be shaded by the brow as in your shot. There's only one solution for that if you can't move the light lower, you must move the face higher into the light. A very simple way to do that without a lot of complicated communication is to find something taller to stand on (stool, step ladder, chair) and tell the subject to look up at the camera. With face looking up and camera looking down the camera sensor and front of face will be parallel // just as on the ground || but you'll have much more flattering and appealing light on the face.
Next after getting light in the eyes pay attention to the shadows. Is the entire front of the face, both eyes and mouth, highlighted or half hidden in shadow because the subject has turned away from the key light. Try this approach using a north facing window: http://photo.nova.org/Window
These are old shots from a 2001 tutorial I put together using my first digital camera but they illustate the above suggestions:
Turn the face towards the window until you see the front of the face highlighted by the light isn't spilling past the front onto the far side. Watch how the nose shadow is falling and try to have it fall along the base of the nose, not hang out sideways or too far down.
I shot standing on a chair identical to the one his foot is on with him looking up. It helps to get light past the brow and into the eyes and for older subjects tightens and slims the neck and slightly foreshortens the body sliming it.
That's not the only way to shoot a portrait of course, but if you master that way you should be able to figure out by trying it first then trying everything else what if anything works better to flatter your subject.
Beyond that the technical stuff is quite simple and routine:
1) Buy and use a commercial gray card to set White Balance: If you set Custom WB in the camera off the gray card and get it nominal in in the camera you will not need to correct it after the fact.
2) Expose for the highlights using the camera clipping warning, fill for the shadows per the left side of the histogram.
The clipping warning is your best guide for highlight exposure because it shows when and more importantly where highlights are clipping. It's like having a million + spot metering zones. But in order to see it you need a highlight in the photo that will clip. I used this target combination for setting exposure (when practical):
The gray card is used for step one, setting Custom WB. Next I adjust exposure until I see the white towel start to clip. It's the proxy for any white clothing the subject will be wearing. Also I know from experience that when the white objects are rendered just below clipping the skin highlights will also be reproduced perfectly. Once I adjust the exposure based on clipping in the highlights whether or not there is detail in the black towel and separation in the black patch of the MacBeth chart and the surrounding border is a function of two variables: camera DR and lighting contrast.
The test shot above was taken on a overcast day so the camera DR could handle the range of the scene and put detail in the black towel. But that's not the case on a sunny day...
In the shot above I exposed to keep detail in the sunlit parts of the white towel, but the camera DR couldn't handle the contrast of the lighting and rendered everything else darker than seen by eye. I could have adjusted exposure to make the front side look "normal" as seen by eye but that would blow the highlights by 2-3 stops.
I know when the camera can't handle the scene contrast by first exposing the white highlights below clipping and looking at the left side of the histogram. If it is piled up and running off the left side it tells me the scene range exceeds the sensor. My options are:
1 - Find a location such as open shade where the contrast of the scene is lower
2 - Use flash in the foreground to fit the foreground the flash hits to the sensor range
1) Neutral WB at capture (as a starting baseline)
2) Recording a full range of detail on the subject (what makes them look "normal").
If you are able to accomplish both of those in the camera all that's needed in Photoshop is retouching to remove blemishes, smooth skin, tone down distractions, etc. It's not really that difficult once you understand the concepts and an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of Photoshop cure.
Rusty & Chuck - many thanks for the feedback and critique. I appreciate you taking time to comment and offer suggestions.
To give you a bit more info. regarding the method in my madness, my main goal was trying to use available, natural light in these photos. I my house there are few areas that don't have a cluttered background and access to decent light. Maybe it's time to invest in some background paper. I was hopeful that by using a fairly wide aperture, I could somewhat de-focus the background. Although not evident in the above photo, I did succeed in several others.
My biggest problem was the subject - a 2 1/2 year old with the attention span of a gnat. Trying to get her to "pose" was challenging at best. I had other shots that were better technically but with horrible facial expressions, etc. My hat's off to people who do kids for a living.
Chuck, I read and re-read your detailed technical information. Well done. I will certainly try to keep all those elements in mind next time. FYI, the http://super.nova.org/Window address is broken.
Thanks again guys. Much appreciated.
Kids that age are impossible to pose. But if you practice on older subjects who will hold a pose and follow my suggestions that will allow you to instinctly find the place in the room where you can catch a moving subject with good light on their face at a flattering angle, with the camera in portrait mode with head in the upper third of the frame.
Natural light is great, but more often than not it doesn't create FLATTERING light on faces because as in your shot the eyes are shaded and the face is turned away from the light. That's why indoors I use flash. Here's a real life example.
Friends stopped by to show off their daughter's new dance outfit. I had the camera with a single flash on bracket w, diffuser so I put her in a white chair to get a white background and took some shots. The centered flash on the bracket produces predictable flattering lighitng on faces so I didn't need to think about the lighting or the ambient light...
30 seconds later she slipped out the chair on her butt and was crying, photo session over.. It lasted all of about 5 min. The window of opportunity for kids is narrow, which is why I control the lighting with flash.
The next year at her birthday party I just put my slave in the corner behind the action as rim light and relied on the Master on the bracket to create flattering lighting in front:
Had I relied on the natural / ambient room lighting the results wouldn't have looked nearly as good. So if you want flattering candids until such time as your little model can hold a pose you might want to invest in a pair of flashes. See: http://photo.nova.org/CanonPracticalUsage/
In general, portraiture is more about working with people than it is the mechanics of the photography. With children, it's even more so. It helps if you can make it fun, turn it into a game and add a dose of silliness. That also helps with children.
AuntiPode wrote:
In general, portraiture is more about working with people than it is the mechanics of the photography. With children, it's even more so. It helps if you can make it fun, turn it into a game and add a dose of silliness. That also helps with children.
Excellent advice. Parents nowadays drill their kids to be wary of strangers to the point at when we moved to our current house and waved and said hello to the young kids next door they'd run inside and tell Mommy some stranger was talking to them.
The first time I photographed the kids in the studio the kids where as uptight as cats in a room full of rocking chairs. Mom hovering in the background coaching them made things worse because I just couldn't make a connection with them.
Finally, more out of desparation than any brilliant insight I said, "Kids, just ignore Mom and make 'monster faces' for me."
That appealed to the kids on several levels: getting to ignore Mom and goof off. They were a bit timid at first so I shot a few frames, showed them, and egged the on saying they weren't scary or goofy enough. After 2-3 rounds of shoot and show they ran out of faces and tired of the game, but were totally relaxed and attentive because the way they perceived me and the process of getting photographed had changed.
Ever since when shooting kids I set up a simple centered lighting strategy and start the session by letting them goof off in front of the camera. Some those shot wind up being "keepers" becuase the parents love the expressions....
... and others give me ideas for poses I wouldn't have otherwise thought of I'll refine after settling down for the more serious posed shots... http://super.nova.org/MP/MM_2045S.jpg
For things like posing I take the time to explain why the pose works as I do with adults. Kids are curious and absorb more than you might think. After teaching the older girl how to "stand and walk like a model" I went into the next room to grab a different lens and came back to find her coaching her little brother how to pose. I've been shooting the kids every holiday season for the past five years and now its all I can do to keep up with the girl as she spontaneously creates great poses without any coaching from me... http://super.nova.org/MP/MM_2299S.jpg
None of these shots have complicated lighting strateges. I use two lights on a single stand back next to the camera, one high as key light, the other chin level as fill both at equal strength which creates light, open, soft looking modeling. It's creating the environment that lets the kids forget that it's a drag getting dressed up for photo so they revert to their normal personalities that's the key — its the expressions that "sell" the shot. The best thing the lighting and other technlcal stuff can do is stay out of the way by not creating any distractions such as abnormally dark shadows, shaded eyes, etc. I get the similar lighitng in candid shots by keeping a flash on a bracket over the lens.
It will be more difficult photographing your own kids versus strangers because of how they relate to you in general. You may need to resort to bribery to get them to pose. Another trick for older kids is getting them involved with the process, letting them take some photos and showing them how to make them better. That makes them more cooperative when they are in front of the camera.
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