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Archive 2015 · First post from a hobby photographer

  
 
OculoMentis
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p.1 #1 · p.1 #1 · First post from a hobby photographer


In truth I've casually dabbled with photography as a hobby for a few years now but recently I decided to get more serious since my wife blessed me with two beautiful daughters. Even better they are starting to show interest in it as well which makes for a great daddy daughter time!

The following picture is something I took last weekend and thought it was good enough to past muster on here. Would love to know what you experienced folks think and I welcome any suggestions that could help me get better with the technicals









Oct 06, 2015 at 01:35 AM
haedon
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p.1 #2 · p.1 #2 · First post from a hobby photographer


Well, I'm not expert on photography but your shot is very clear. I could sense the simplicity in your daughter's eye.


Oct 06, 2015 at 04:35 AM
sbeme
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p.1 #3 · p.1 #3 · First post from a hobby photographer


Engagement with your daughter is great with a nice smile, great eye contact.
Choice of DOF isolates her from the background well and dreamy bokeh.
Not so sure about the crop. It's not centered, a plus, but there is alot of real estate on the right and an unfortunate circular cluster of OOF bright spots the size of her head competing on the right. Maybe crop some of that out or go vertical and eliminate that area entirerly.
Needs some effort to see if you can recover highlights along the left side of her face (right side in image), near her collar, in her hair.

Curious about the camera body. I think it has been marketed towards landscape folks, although Ben (on this forum) has shown the value of all those pixels in some bird photography as well. Do you have a particular area of interest within photography?


Scott



Oct 06, 2015 at 07:19 AM
dmacmillan
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p.1 #4 · p.1 #4 · First post from a hobby photographer


She's a cutie!
It looks like she was surrounded by foliage, standing in dappled sunlight. Notice the big hot spot on the left side of her head. You could try to move her so that no direct sunlight was hitting her. Often though, there is no place under foliage where there is no sunlight hitting the subject.

That leaves you with a couple of choices. If you have an assistant, they can use a reflector as a "gobo" to block the direct light. If you have two assistants, one can block the light and the other can hold a white reflector to kick some light back onto your subject.

The other choice is to shoot at a different time of day when the light is much softer. Position your subject at the edge of the foliage with the sun setting behind and a big open field behind you. This golden hour light is very flattering and often does not require any fill.

I like that you shot wide open. I would suggest you double your ISO and shutter speed, assuming this was hand held (if not, ignore). The general rule is 1/focal length if you have great handholding technique. Most should shoot 2x 1/focal length, or at least 1/600 with a 300mm lens.

Finally, I have some post processing suggestions. If you aren't doing so now, shoot RAW. This gives you a lot more flexibility when post processing.

When shooting under a canopy of leaves like this, it is hard to keep green out of the skin tones. You've got some green reflections here. The aforementioned reflector kicking in some "pure" sunlight would go a long way to help. If you shoot under these conditions a lot, buy a X-Rite Passport color checker. This goes way beyond a simple w grey card, Expodisk or WhiBal card. You take a reference frame of the card at the subject position. Then, you use they software that comes with it to create a custom profile (not WB). This gives the most accurate color correction for not only the WB, but also for the camera and lens.

Finally, your image looks a little too contrasty, especially for a young subject. That accentuates any splotchiness in the skin tone. It has also made her dark eyes go even darker.



Oct 06, 2015 at 07:55 AM
georgetd
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p.1 #5 · p.1 #5 · First post from a hobby photographer


This is a very nice portrait, excellent expression. As Scott mentioned, the highlights are a little blown, but I expect these can be recovered from a raw. Colors look good, I wouldn't change them.

I like the off center crop quite a bit. I wish there was just a little more up top to get the rest of her hair in the frame, but it works pretty well as is. I'd also consider cropping just a tad off the right side, to put her nose right on a third line.

There are some odd shadows in the OOF section of the image. I'm not sure what caused them, but it may be worth some time to try and remove them. Since there's not a lot of details, this is actually pretty easy to do.

I'm somewhat curious about the equipment as well. It seems a somewhat odd choice for portraiture (though it's obviously worked well enough), and isn't what I expect someone just dabbling to be using.





Cropped just a tad from the right, and mucked with the oof a bit.




Oct 06, 2015 at 08:11 AM
OculoMentis
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p.1 #6 · p.1 #6 · First post from a hobby photographer


Wow thank you guys! This is exactly the sort of feedback I was looking for! I haven't really learned how to do basic post work yet but the feedback makes great sense. Will keep working on it. Really appreciate the commentary. I do shoot raw so I will attempt to make a few adjustments.

I'm currently trying to understand why the colors I get with the CMYK profile selected are so much more vibrant than when I proof the colors with monitor RGB. Really I'm trying to figure out how to send select photos I'm particularly proud of off to my local print shop and make sure I get as close to what I see in Photoshop as possible.

I suppose I do owe folks a explanation about the equipment though. So long story short this isn't my equipment (sorry should have mentioned). My main body for years now has been the 7D and now the 7D Mark II. Absolutely love them. I have been thinking about upgrading to full frame for a while though and decided to rent the new 5DSR as it is the latest Canon has released and I was curious about having the option of 50MP. Well while at the rental shop I saw the 300mm and couldn't resist. The lens is jaw droppingly fast and sharp and I was immediately sad that I didn't bring my twice as fast 7D to the park the day that I shot this... which of course would have been extremely useful since this wasn't a formal portrait session as much as it was me laying on the ground snapping a few gigs of photos of the girls running through the bushes.

Again thanks for the responses and compliments. This forum has really served as an inspiration to get better.



Oct 06, 2015 at 09:28 AM
RustyBug
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p.1 #7 · p.1 #7 · First post from a hobby photographer




OculoMentis wrote:
Wow thank you guys! ... This forum has really served as an inspiration to get better.


Thanks be to Fred for the insight to give us a realm to foster growth.

FM ROCKS !!! :-)

Bring on the pics.



Oct 06, 2015 at 09:42 AM
lighthound
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p.1 #8 · p.1 #8 · First post from a hobby photographer


+1 @ all the others suggestions and nits and Kent's "FM rocks" statement. This is a wonderful place to learn and grow.

It definitely feels left heavy with all the empty space on the right.

I played around with this before/as you were responding a few minutes ago. I'm not a portrait guy but I can identify all the nits the others had pointed out and wanted to give it a try to illustrate some options. Being that you have a raw file you'll be able to do much better work than I did here.

Oh, and yep, she's a cutie. Glad you both had some good bonding time!

Dave







Oct 06, 2015 at 10:13 AM
Almass
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p.1 #9 · p.1 #9 · First post from a hobby photographer


Big Sighhhhhhhh!

It is a brilliant shot.

I particurarly like the blown highlights.

I only have one advise. Keep shooting Bruv.



Oct 06, 2015 at 11:40 AM





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