Taking Shots of the Kids

Willow98248

I am learning still and I would appreciate any input. Most of these are taken with natural lighting. Danielle
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5.

Dragonlady

Keep an eye on these things.
Welcome! I am no where close to an expert. However, some of the things I have learned from hanging out around here. Crops are too tight on most of them.

1. I like the rim light but her hair is obscuring her face.
2. Again nice rim light but you cut off her her hands.
3. Crop is a little tight and you cut off both their hands.
4. I like this pose the best but the dappled light makes for hot spots.
5. This is probably the best exposure of your images but the background is a little distracting and there is a pole growing out of her head and her elbow is cut off .

Believe me, I know how hard it is to look through the viewfinder and see all of that going on in the background. Overall not too bad. Just keep up the good work.

adbsgicom

So #1 is what I've been experimenting with (as well as DivaMum) in a couple of different threads. The tough thing here is you've already totally blown out the sky, and her face is still under exposed and lacking some 'pop'. Also, because her face is in the shade, the light will be more blue. Possible solutions include: knock down the ambient exposure a bunch, and use your flash to compensate; or use your flash as a fill (which means to dial down its compensation to just add a little light); or use a reflector to bounce some light back at her; or some combination of the above. If you had the ambient toned down more, you have this sort of detail in her face area (shifted the green toward magenta 3 ticks in CS as well):

girl in tree.jpg

In 1/2/3 you have a lot of green light from the tree and grass that is making them look a little green. You need to adjust your whitepoint.

#4 has the hotspots, esp. on his nose that are hard to fix in PP.

#5 is best of the bunch with healthy skin tone.

Overall you have nice locations and the right idea, and fine-looking subjects. I'm very much on the path of trying to get the right, so season my opinions with the appropriate amount of salt.

Willow98248

Deb ~ thanks for the tips. I will deffinately keep that those in mind when I go out shooting the kids later this week.

Andrew ~ I always forget about the reflector! (Probably because it's a pain to shoot and hold that thing in place at the same time! I will have to get one of the kids to hold it next time!!) I agree about the fine-looking subjects...hopefully they don't get too tired of me taking their pictures!!