Hurts my feet seeing her walking on that road but kids are tough these days. I took two of your images and spent about five minutes a piece keeping in mind that this is all very subjective and you can go any direction you want. It also reminds me of an instructor I had at Art Center, Hal Adams, who made us turn in our assignments on color slides. He would then have a little sample gel filter pack where he would hold up colored gels in front of the projector lens to show how adding overall washes of color could affect the mood and take images away from normal, and going too far was often required in order to see where you needed to come back down to. Anyhow, this is a rough idea, and keep in mind that when I do this for my own images, I'll do a treatment and keep coming back to refine it every day for a week or more until I'm pretty sure that's where the image wants to be.
aks6674 wrote:
Regarding the rose petals, those are actually part of the single shot (they're real, not added in post). Is that what you mean? Or you mean you'd just apply some blur to them?
Interesting! They have a "hard edge" to them from sharpening that makes them look cut and pasted. Perhaps you could selectively not sharpen them as much as the rest of the image. Just a little would help.
Photographers like Elena Shumilova are known for their backlit images and they often fly in all sorts of "enhancements", including leaves, snowflakes, dust, rain and other atmospheric elements. Sometimes they work, especially when done subtly. Often they are overdone, especially when the photographer gets lazy and copies the same leaf or whatever in various places in the photo. Elena is a little more tasteful than some I've seen, although she does get a little carried away with various farm animals and other props.
Hey it's a matter of taste I guess. Some folks like Monet and others like Thomas Kinkade. Some like Dave Brubeck and others like ABBA.
Outdoors
Get to location half an hour earlier.
Ask the client to send me pics of the outfits they want to wear so I can set up a shot list. There are a few pics here that I wish were done in different combinations - I'd like the laying down shot in the green outfit, I'd like some road pics in the sundress, etc. As it was, I had a list of shots but didn't match them with the right outfit.
Bring the light more off-axis for the lay-down shot, and soften it.
Indoors
Bring the lights down/closer for headshots.
Get my own height right for full body shots (many had weird perspective problems).
dmacmillan wrote:
Interesting! They have a "hard edge" to them from sharpening that makes them look cut and pasted. Perhaps you could selectively not sharpen them as much as the rest of the image. Just a little would help.
/quote]
Ahh. So here's the real problem then - I don't sharpen a full image, only a few things in it (eyelashes, etc), and on this one I sharpened the flowers as well since that was in the image they sent me. I'll try this one again without that sharpening and see how it looks.
This is a really impressive, um, "start"! As a hobbyist people photographer, I should hope, someday to be half this good. Sincerely.
The comments and critique you've received have most insightful, constructive, and well written. The entire dialog here has been quite valuable, not just to you, but to the rest of us, including us duffers. Truly an excellent learning opportunity.
Peter Figen wrote:
Hurts my feet seeing her walking on that road but kids are tough these days. I took two of your images and spent about five minutes a piece keeping in mind that this is all very subjective and you can go any direction you want. It also reminds me of an instructor I had at Art Center, Hal Adams, who made us turn in our assignments on color slides. He would then have a little sample gel filter pack where he would hold up colored gels in front of the projector lens to show how adding overall washes of color could affect the mood and take images away from normal, and going too far was often required in order to see where you needed to come back down to. Anyhow, this is a rough idea, and keep in mind that when I do this for my own images, I'll do a treatment and keep coming back to refine it every day for a week or more until I'm pretty sure that's where the image wants to be. ...Show more →
I like what you did with her skin tones in your second version. That is pretty much exactly as I suggested in my earlier post. The first seems a little overdone as you did indicate might be the result of your enhancements. Her face seems to have lost some contrast or presence. Great that you did make the effort and illustrate the alterations I also felt were necessary (but did not even try to fix )
I actually added a layer using Screen blending mode and brushed in just a tad of "flare" for lack of a better word, which did soften the contrast a bit. There are a lot of ways you can go with these types of images and there's no really wrong or right way. I thought it might be helpful to show a couple rather than just talk about them. And, as I mentioned before, I tend to do something, come back the next day, refine it, and repeat that process for several days - when I have the luxury of time, so what I did today might change tomorrow, but not a lot.
calk wrote:
This is a really impressive, um, "start"! As a hobbyist people photographer, I should hope, someday to be half this good. Sincerely.
The comments and critique you've received have most insightful, constructive, and well written. The entire dialog here has been quite valuable, not just to you, but to the rest of us, including us duffers. Truly an excellent learning opportunity.
Thanks to all.
Cal K
Thank you Cal - and totally agree on the C&C. If I didn't want it, I'd just keep posting to Facebook where my Mom will tell me how great I am. ;-)
Really like the first and third of this series. Captures the mood of the place really well. Lovely model too. Maybe a little more contrast and saturation, but overall, the work is quite evocative.
Arka wrote:
Really like the first and third of this series. Captures the mood of the place really well. Lovely model too. Maybe a little more contrast and saturation, but overall, the work is quite evocative.
I'm not much of a people photographer any longer but I can't believe no one has brought up the similarity of your images to Jake Olsen's and to me, that is a good thing.
The ones of the road fading into the distance reminds me so much of his work and I want you to take that as a compliment.
Great overall series. Keep up the fantastic work and your clients will be very pleased!
JayDavis wrote:
I'm not much of a people photographer any longer but I can't believe no one has brought up the similarity of your images to Jake Olsen's and to me, that is a good thing...
Thanks so much Jay. I posted some others in a previous post and the comparison was made there, and I take it as you mean it. That backlit portrait style really speaks to me, and I'm very happy to have my work mentioned in the same post.
As a Hill County resident myself, and an enthusiastic hobbyist with my own daughter to shoot tomorrow, I'm curious of the general area where these were shot. Not looking to replicate, as we are headed to Blanco. Just curious.
Great work. I can only hope come close in my efforts.
)