First photo shoot, that was so much fun!

marcpro

I spent a couple of hours Saturday afternoon doing a photo shoot with my daughter. I never thought this would be so much fun! I'm a nature/landscape photographer, but I have to admit I loved working with another person as the subject, it's a completely different dynamic.

This experience also makes me appreciate some new challenges: I don't have much light, which results in shadow areas (fixable to some extent in Lightroom) and soft focus (harder to fix). A better lens would also help with sharpness and background. I guess better backgrounds would also help!

Here are a few keepers from that afternoon:

1.


2.


3.


4.


5.


6.


7.


8.


Thanks for looking... comments, critics and tips appreciated.

r3t1awr3yd

What's there to say? It was your first time and it looks like you both had fun and were comfortable... not much else you can ask for lol. As far as lighting, this being your first time, I think it's really more on you to decide what kind of looks you like and what you wanna go for.

Personally... I'd throw a reflector in for good measure in a number of the shots but I LOVE the color of your lighting (almost warm candle glow). Especially in 3 and 4. It looks very natural.

Qarik

sorry but it is waay past warm candle glow. are your walls pink/salmon colored? it's leaving color cast I can't get past.

marcpro

On my screen, they look fine when I look at them with Lightroom, but they look way too pink when I look at them with Xnview. The difference is quite noticeable. I printed three of these yesterday at a pro lab, and they came out just fine, there is no excessive pink or salmon on the prints. I don't know why they look so pink with Xnview. They also look fine in my browser (Firefox). I will try other browsers to see it there is a difference.

Edit: Also looks fine with Windows Photo viewer, but they look pink with Microsoft Internet Explorer. I'm soooo confused.

r3t1awr3yd

3/4 seriously look orangish to me like candle glow... maybe my eyes are going lol

reyvee61

Well....<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" /><o:p></o:p>
I'm going to go against the grain here primarily because these are ambient light shots. I've shot many a candid of my kids in this type of lighting and I find the best option is to convert to B&W when all else fails. I think you have some very nice shots overall and I like how you managed to keep glare off of her lenses as well. Number one is my fave of the bunch...<o:p></o:p>
Keep shooting......<o:p></o:p>
I love working with people!<o:p></o:p>

adbsgicom

If you didn't export with sRGB, you can pick up a red cast. The place you printed may have corrected the color if you sent them images in some other color space (like AdobeRGB).
The blues of her eyes you pick up in the first couple is really beautiful. The latter images in the sequence seem softer than the first ones for some reason. Agree on the comments about a little more fill light; I like the lighting in the first two most.

marcpro

Wow, thanks everyone for your comments and critics, I'm learning a lot.

Andrew: I did export with sRGB, and the color casts in the picture are pretty much what I intended. This being my first portrait session, I'm learning that the candleglow effect doesn't work for everybody, and I'll have to remember that for the future. The softness in the images is probably due to 1) my cheap lens, and 2) the low light which makes it hard for the autofocus. I'll have to work on more fill light next time as well.

I also learned a lot about color profiles and why IE shows my pics as being pink, but not Firefox. This post: http://www.artstorm.net/journal/2009/07/color-management-wide-gamut-dell-2408/ talks about color profiles and why LCD and LED displays can show over saturated colors sometimes, and how to fix this problem.

Cheers.

Qarik

btw is your monitor HW color cailbrated?

dawssvt

Nice! Enjoy the hobby!