Help! monitor issue, look at this image

VayCayMom

Recently my Huey started something new and I had a hard time adjusting my monitors brightness and contrast to what I thought it was asking for.
So today I did a new adjustment and when I went back to what I had been working on it was way too black, and now I don't know what to trust.

here are three images, the 1st is the one I finished before the calibration. It now looks shockingly too black, too much contrast, too much brightness.

the second is SOOC

the 3rd is Lightroom tweaked just a tad to lift the midtones, much more needed in PS. I I KNOW, I need to do better sooc) these are somewhat old images.

does this seem to agree with what you are seeing on your monitors??






sooc





:bow

Nikolai

Trudy
1) goot shot
2) you can always go "by the numbers"
3) you should know better than to shoot white (fair skinned) people under harsh midday sun (even in the shadows) wearing black outfits. Your real gamut is out of the camera reach. You either lose outfit details (as in #1) or have the image look flat (##2, 3).
I always remember Dan Margulis' exercise with 3 cats, white, gray and black. You can have a gorgeous picture of each, but you can't have all three in one frame without losing something
HTH

Icebear

Trudy, I just have to ask (sorry): Why did you shoot so wide? You're having to throw away so much data (with the attendant IQ degradation) when you crop so much. You really got a nice image, but you may as well have been shooting with a 3 megapixel camera.

zoomer

Yes what you described matches what I see on my monitor.
Having said that, if you decrease the black point on the first shot, it would probably look ok, or just a bit of shadow highlights balanced with some midtone contrast to back.

VayCayMom

Thanks to each of you to also give me food for thought. I LOVE this place !!!

Indeed why do I make some of these mistakes? Because I have not yet come to dealing with that issue, I have some HUGE gaps in my skills !!! But each time they are brought to my attention it helps improve my images in areas I hadn't even though about yet. Thank you everyone !!!!! Your advice as well as questions is most excellent.

Glad I caught this BEFORE I told my client they were ready. bow

PS I am going to buy a book by Dan M right now before I forget about it again.

kevingeary

On a side note, I'm not sure I like the posing. Mom is a floating body-less head amongst her family.

VayCayMom

Icebear wrote: »

Trudy, I just have to ask (sorry): Why did you shoot so wide? You're having to throw away so much data (with the attendant IQ degradation) when you crop so much. You really got a nice image, but you may as well have been shooting with a 3 megapixel camera.

Icebear, I was probably using my monopod, because I don't have enough strength somedays, and I was TOO lazy to figure out how to use it to hold the camera in a portrait position. Yep, I bet that is what is was. I recently noted talk about filling the frame and I made a note to find out who posted the info so I could read it.
You made a very good observation..... Thanks.

Agnieszka

kevingeary wrote: »

On a side note, I'm not sure I like the posing. Mom is a floating body-less head amongst her family.

+1. I don't understand your posing in this photo I would have probably done the "traditional" thing and put mom and dad in the middle, little one probably in mom's lap and the 2 older girls on either side of the parents, or maybe put them around mom ... but I would have not done 3 rows. For a small group of people definitely less rows ...

Nikolai

Agnieszka wrote: »

+1. I don't understand your posing in this photo I would have probably done the "traditional" thing and put mom and dad in the middle, little one probably in mom's lap and the 2 older girls on either side of the parents, or maybe put them around mom ... but I would have not done 3 rows. For a small group of people definitely less rows ...

Ditto. Two Rows. Dad with baby, Mom on the back, two girls up front.

VayCayMom

Now I recall why I posed this family this way... for a couple of reasons... Dad is small and short. Mom is tall and a big boned woman. Dad had been out of work for quite some time, Mom has been the bread winner... it is all coming back to me now...that makes sense to me, in MY mind it made things balanced. Side by side they make a odd pair to photograph, but I'd like suggestions on what else could have been done.

and I just figured out I can take the head from my tripod and use it on my monopod if I want to use camera in landscape AND portrait easily. AHA!!

Agnieszka

VayCayMom wrote: »

Now I recall why I posed this family this way... for a couple of reasons... Dad is small and short. Mom is tall and a big boned woman.

I would have sat them down and either try to pose her in such a way that she doesn't look quite as big, or have one of her girls cover her up a bit .... Just play around a bit next time (It never hurts to have a couple different poses anyway ... you'll see everybody (the family included) will have a different opinion about the photo they like)

Agnieszka

Btw, check this out ... very nicely posed + you'd never really know what body type mommy is ...:

http://www.photovisionvideo.com/blog/2011/04/drake-busath-come-back-any-time/