kittens, girls, and a mysterious artist

lisarhinehart

Today I ran into a few intersting subjects:

1. Two cute little girls who found two adorable kittens


2. Played with them

3.


4. and gave them lots of TLC

5.



6.Enters the mysterious artist


7.She didn't mind me taking her photo either


8. love the hand


thanks to everyone who has been encouraging me and helping me to see what I need to work on. I am getting better at manipulating focus points (eyes are mostly in focus this time) and choosing better aperatures for portraits (no f16- lol!)-- I still have trouble keeping the second person in focus, if that makes and sense...

You can see it in the first shot-- to get the bokeh, etc. I chose f2.8, but then the second girl, who is a few inches behind the first girl is out of focus-- I'm thinking if I shut the ap down a little it would have helped to create a greater dof-- what ap would you have tried(?)

Qarik

I would have shot that at f/5 or so. Any time I am doing a headshot I know I am in close so the DOF will be thin. So as a rule I will never do headshots at f/2.8.

Wil Davis

Lovely girls & kittens! Nice pictures; I like #1, I think I would have tried for 2 versions, perhaps one where the focus was on the eyes of the girl looking directly at the camera; the one you have has the focus on the eye of the girl who isn't looking at the camera; perhaps you could have had her look directly into the camera? …or done 2 or 3 with different focus points…

#4 is quite excellent, although the eyes really need to be in pin-sharp focus!

#5 is nice and balanced, nice textures!

The mysterious artist is interesting; her eye colour is quite striking, but I'm not sure if she really was happy with you taking her picture…

Nice textures on the hands, but the light is flat, and I think I would have kept the hands out of the middle of the frame (rule of thirds); slightly different composition or cropping perhaps.

Hey, it's so easy to criticize other peoples pics (feel free to visit mine and slam me… ( wildavis.smugmug.com ) thanks so much for sharing your pictures with us here!

Keep shooting!

- Wil

WingsOfLovePhoto

Much better Lisa I l like them!

As for number 1.... hard to shoot 2 people at 2.8 when they are not side by side...unless you want that effect of the background person not in focus which is good for lots of shots.. and I actually think it works here....rule of thumb...never shoot lower than the number of subjects in the picture. So like if you had 4 people in a picture you would want to shoot not less than 4 but probably 5.6 etc..... I would only use 2.8 for one person....

I really love #4.....best of the bunch.. good posing and lighting the only thing that is bugging me is that I want to patch tool away the vein? or shadow that is going down the middle of her forehead. It distracts me :eek1

Your artist could have benefited with a little fill or more ambient...hard to tell not knowing the conditions.
Love the hand!

Keep up the good work!

Hard to tell on my monitor but there might be a touch of noise in some? what ISO did you use?

divamum

These are terrific, Lisa - I think you caught some great moments! If you hadn't said you were aiming for both girls in focus in #1 I'd have assumed that was intentional use of DOF - it works here. "Out of focus" isn't always bad! However, to get both of them sharp I would have probably gone for about 5.6; certainly no less than 4.0. Of course, it also depends on your focal length and how far away you are.....

I don't see any noise, fwiw - they look clean to me.

Nice series!

sweet caroline

I love the interaction in #5. I would crop out some of the back of the girl's head.

Caroline

lisarhinehart

in answer to your questions
As always, thanks for the c&c. I appreciate everyone taking the time to check out my work and help me to improve.

In answer to the questions about the first pic of the girls, I wasn't expecting the second girl, I had the shot composed, moved the focal point, and then out popped the second girl, surprizing the first one... I wanted to catch the expression and didn't have time to adjust anything, so i just snapped it, but I liked how it turned out. Thanks dm for your vote of confidence. It sounds like f4 or 5 woudl have worked to get them both in focus(?) Nice tip of the aps for differing amounts of people. I'm still pretty slow at adjusting things, but getting faster lol :P

I don't think there is noise as I shot at ISO 100, and maybe a few at 200, but I doubt it.

I see what you mean about patching the shadow/vein in 4, but don't know how to do that-- I'm just starting to play with all of this stuff.

Good idea on cropping out some of the hair-- I think it will draw more attention to the ktiten's expression.

These weren't posed, but just capturing the moment. I need to get more comfortable in posing, I guess. :P I was lucky w/ these subjects b/c they were such "hams."

Regaurding the artist, it was getting dark-- I beet fill flash woudl have helped, but I didn't notice then, lol. I wasn't as happy with her pics once I downloaded them, even though they looked great in my LCD, she was such a natural-- I guess they needed "pop." I don't know if it was the lack of light, lack of makeup/flattering clothes or my cropping making her look like she had stubby appendages-- lol, I'm really not sure and hope that came across right :P. Anyway I tried to get her eyes to be the "pop," I dunno. I woudl almost have liked to see a red dress or flower, or some color.

I'll post a few more.

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