Steady - Thanks for the comments, I agree that the houses ruin the shot. Unfortunately my PPing isnt quit good enough to remove them.
atnmac - Thank you for looking and commenting. The noise was not inetentional, I screwed up. Shot indoors the night before and forgot to change ISO. They were shot at 1000.
Good comments above.
In #1 you have her positioned well in ROT.
Consider a crop of #2 as suggested for #1. You decide.
#3 is a cute shot with good expression.
#4 That's a very nice camera you have there.
All of them have dark eye sockets. That's caused by the high angle of the natural light and the brow shading the eyes. Fill will not help that situation. By the time you add enough fill to make the eyes look normal you'd blow the highlights on the forehead and cheek. The solution is quite simple. Have your subject raise their face up into the light. Then to maintain a flattering, slightly downward from above the tip of the nose view of the face you need to find a way to raise your camera position. Stand on something 2-3 ft. higher or bring along a small step ladder.
Clothing is the biggest potential from the face. The patterned top is busy and distracting but works OK with the background due to the similar colors. But her blue skirt clashes with both the top and the background becoming, by virtue of color contrast, a big distraction which will pull attention down off the face. Solution? Crop out the blue skirt in shots 1&2.
Also a neat perceptual slight of hand trick with distracting patterned clothing like the top is to selectively blur it, with it blurred more at the bottom and less nearer to the face. The blur will mimic the way our eyes selectively focus on only the center two degrees of our field of view. Most viewers will gravitate immediately to the face by instinct -- making eye contact with a stranger -- then satisfied with the face will wander off in search of the next contrasting thing (brightness, color, pattern/sharpness) which catches the corner of the eye (which is 3000x more sensitive than the center). Blurring / darkening the bottom and edges of the frame and less important details sends a subliminal clue to the brain of the viewer that the face is more important. When the eye wanders off the face and hits blurred areas the brain will send the eyes back to the sharper face. The more distraction from the face you eliminate or minimize perceptually like that the more effective the portrait becomes.
On the subject of cropping, don't chop off limbs arbitrarily as you did with the hand in #1 or position them awkwardly as in #2. Portraits are about the face and when you introduce hands into a portrait you are also introducing two flesh toned distraction which will at some level compete for attention with the face. If the hands are not critical to the intended message of the photo, such as a musician or an engagement shot featuring the ring the hands are better left out of sight from the standpoint of making the front of the face the star of the show. Gaps between arm and body as in #1 also create distractions because the contrast the gap creates attracts attention where an arm gracefully curved along the body wouldn't.
A solution for a distracting background as in #3 is to just clone out the houses. Thats most easily done by cloning on a dupe layer then using a mask created with the aid of the magic wand selection tool...
Jim - Thanks for the comments on each individual picture. I am not sure what, "In #1 you have her positioned well in ROT." means. Can you please explain. I agree both 2 and 1 should have better crops.
Chuck - Thank you very much for the detailed comments. Your tips and suggestions will certainly help me in the future. The funny thing about the cropping of hands and other body parts is that as a sports photographer I should no better. I originally had the crop tighter as the above comments have suggested and at the last minute I opened it up a little. It wasnt until I posted that I noticed the hand was not only showing, but also chopped! Once again I appreciate the comments.
I have been not happy with my focussing. Do these look OOF to anyone. I also screwed up by shooting at ISO 1000. I was at f2.0. I am yearning to get those tack sharp pictures that I often see here.
bugspit wrote:
Jim - Thanks for the comments on each individual picture. I am not sure what, "In #1 you have her positioned well in ROT." means. Can you please explain. I agree both 2 and 1 should have better crops.
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ROT means Rule of Thirds - google it for a full explaination. Basically it means positioning your subject on the intersection of lines (2 vertical, 2 horizontal) that divide the frame into 9 equal squares. The ROT position for a subject usually looks better than a centered subject.
I explain why the Rule of Thirds works, and when it isn't the best choice in this tutorial: LINK
The name "rule" is unfortunate because it gives people the impression that by using it or not they are following some dictate inscribed on a stone tablet. Its really just a term of art for the cause and effect of composing a center of interest in a photo in a way there is a dynamic eye path across a photo. That in term creates the illusion of movement in a still photo like a landscape and in a portrait putting the eyes up around the upper third helps guide the eye past all the less important stuff on the way the face then stopping the eye there. The real magic if the ROT is how it automatically create a nice balance of framing negative space. Balanced in the sense the center of interest doesn't seem cramped in the frame, but not so much extra space above or to the sides that the eye is tempted off the center of interest like the face to go check it out.
The opposite side of the cause and effect coin, what some insist is "breaking the rules" is when the center of interest is placed centered in the frame. That creates a more static composition in the sense that the eye is forced to choose whether to go left or right after seeing the center of interest in the center. If there isn't anything compelling attracting the eye on either side the eye will not move, creating the impression of a solid unmovable object.
Whether the ROT will work in a photo or not mostly depends on the mood you want it to convey: dynamic and energetic; or stationary, solid, static. So rather than thinking in terms of rules, either to follow or break them, think in terms of goals -- the mood and message you want to convey in the photo - then choose whichever compositional. posing and lighting strategy which will best achieve it. By the time you have thought through the goals and the best strategy the tactics and tools needs are usually pretty obvious.
You captured really nice expressions. I would agree with the others on issues such as more light on her eyes and using noise reduction. Overall, these could use a little more "punch," especially since it looks like a gray day, but again, very nice expressions!
Jim and Chuck - Thanks for the clarification. Funny how I know the rules of third, but for some odd reason never knew it as ROT. Chuck your explanation was very helpful and thought me more then what I knew about it.
Damon - Thanks for the noiseware adjustment. I will download a trial and try it on the originals.
Tim - You comment on more punch, I agree. Do you have any suggestions on how to get the "punch".
Also to everyone else, whats your take on picture 4. I dont like it but for some reason she loves it. I have seen shots like this on wedding forums and I tried it, but to me it looks like I missed focus really bad!
