This is silly advice as a response to these images. The exposures are very much in the range of workable, sellable shots.
If I were to give advice for improvement, I would start with posing and clothing consultation (for the family shot), and post processing. Like the OP said, he isn't very good with PS. These images look SOOC-ish for the most part, and as ladytx has shown, a little P/P can do a lot. These are great starting points, but it will help a lot to work on your PS and LR chops.
Also, when you are shooting someone lying down, imagine them standing up, and put your lights where you would (relative to the subject) if they were standing up. Compare the catchlights in the eyes of the family shot, where the child is upright to the ones where he is lying down and you will see a difference. We don't want to light people from below (generally), so we also don't want to see catchlights in the bottoms of the irises in the lying down shots. Hope this helps some.
I learn from all comments. It's better than being ignored, so maybe I'm at least on the right track? I now use a light meter, so my exposures are a lot closer than they used to be. The Sekonic Flashmate L-308S was perfect for me at first because of its simplicity but yes I am ready to move to something a little more sophisticated.
Todd, thanks for some great advice. I thought the lying pose looked a little awkward but couldn't put my finger on why, thanks for the great tip!
Pfiltz wrote:
We have a different set of standards then.
These shots are somewhat underexposed, I would agree with Pfitz that it is best to start with proper exposure then tweek.
It is not that much trouble to look at the historogram on the lcd and re shoot at the proper exposure.
If you do that enough you will need to do it less and less and less.
The important part of the photo is the child, so expose for the childs skin tone.
By the way dad dont look to happy.
Just my thoughts.
ladytx wrote:
#3 is my favorite. This is an adorable photo, just needs a little editing to bring it out. I basically lightened it and sharpened those gorgeous eyes.
I think this is a wonderfull shot, a bit underexposed but the lightened version fixed it. BUT, it looks that you used curves or levels in a wrong way. If you used curves, you lightened in all channels (RGB) and made some strange skin colors. Levels could do the same bad effect. The best (if you dont shoot raw) you need to lighten in the L channel of Lab in photoshop, or if you shoot raw you could tweak the exposure in the raw converter.
ladytx wrote:
#3 is my favorite. This is an adorable photo, just needs a little editing to bring it out. I basically lightened it and sharpened those gorgeous eyes.
How did you do that? I often get images like the before shot and can never seem to transform them into the after shot. Is is possible to get an image like that straight out of the camera? I see peoples stuff here and get discouraged because mine are nowhere as good. Is it largely a function of editing?
