Maternity Pictures - C&C

tipsinartok

Hi there,

I've lurked here on occasion (and posted a little in the past I believe), but have only had my DSLR less than a month. A friend is pregnant and so I took some pictures of her for practice. I would love some CC on what I could do better next time with the tools I have (Canon XS with kit lens and a 50mm f/1.8), and anything I could do for pp. I used DPP to fix white balance and convert to jpg, then used Elements to do some minor colour correction and some of them I sharpened a bit. I've found quite a few of them seem to be really grainy/noisy when I look at the largest sizes, and I'm not sure if this happened in DPP or in Photoshop as I didn't notice it until I'd finished editing them. (The original raw files aren't noisy.)

I found photographing a two year old especially challenging!

Anyway, here are a few and the whole gallery is here.

1.


2.


3.


4.

Shootin1st

No pics showing...may just need to allow external linking in your gallery.

http://dgrin.smugmug.com/gallery/6885595_nUk4R

tipsinartok

Oops, they were working for me so I didn't notice that. Are they showing now?

Thanks!

Shootin1st

tipsinartok wrote:

Oops, they were working for me so I didn't notice that. Are they showing now?

Thanks!

Yep, showing up now. If you leave your Exif data attached or let us know what it was we'll have a better idea of where the noise is coming from.

Love the first one!

angevin1

Thanks for taking the time to share~

Love these~

cheers, tom

Flutist

I love maternity pics, as there is nothing more beautiful than a pregnant woman!!!

#1, is a perfect set up, but the profile of her belly is blown and you can't make out the roundness of the "mama belly" which is really the point of that pose. Try shooting away from the window, that works great for me.

#2 is a very cute candid


#3, LOVE IT!!


#4 adorable and love that the little guy is wearing an Amber teething necklace. (makes me wonder if I know her)

roentarre

The lighting is superb and her expression is sooo beautiful

tipsinartok

Thank you so much all! I over-exposed #1 a little bit on purpose, though I agree I ended up blowing out the belly more than I wanted. When you say shoot away from the window, do you mean move her away from the window entirely or just turn myself so the camera is facing more away from it?

Here is the exif data for these shots in particular, and I set it so it's viewable on my gallery as well:
1. http://photographybylindsay.smugmug.com/photos/newexif.mg?ImageID=464095650&ImageKey=StwNb
2. http://photographybylindsay.smugmug.com/photos/newexif.mg?ImageID=464115978&ImageKey=ucqBB
3. http://photographybylindsay.smugmug.com/photos/newexif.mg?ImageID=464112951&ImageKey=9x5SZ
4. http://photographybylindsay.smugmug.com/photos/newexif.mg?ImageID=464092205&ImageKey=cpibR

I just went and double checked though, and some of them seem noisy even in the original raw versions, so if anyone could help me figure out what it was and how to avoid it in the future I would be grateful.

Flutist

Yup, totally make yourself uncomfortable, and contort into funky positions to get the camera shooting away from the direct light of the window. and if anyone every captures my behind while taking a photo this way.........Ugh! the thought is frightening.