Baseball poster

shphotos

I've been making sports posters for my daughters and their teammates, but this one is for a school auction and the parents made a generous contribution. Any suggestions for improvement? Thanks-

John Patrick

Honestly? No punches pulled?

Ick.

Two cutouts floating in air, two other miniature ones in front of him. Very crowded. I have no clue what I'm supposed to look at.

Of the five shots, only the main one looks decent.
- Upper left has way too much shadow on the face.
- Upper right is underexposed by a stop or so and too cool color-wise.
- Lower left is underexposed and too shadowed.
- Lower right appears too blue, so we have a white balance issue.

I don't care for the font, either.

I'd tell you what to change, but I think it would be better to just start over.

Let me recommend finding some good examples of sports posters out there and "borrowing" some of the design elements to come up with something a bit more coherent. My main thought would be to get rid of the cutouts, bring the kid down in the main photo, and use framed versions of three of the photos above him. If you want to cutout the main and drop some desaturated "ghost" background in there, that may work as well.

Sorry if I rained on your parade, but I tell it like I see it, which is exactly what I want others to tell me.

John

Frog Lady

IMHO, I don't think it's as bad as John makes it out to be, but most of his points are valid. I would add that I don't like the team name intersecting the white frame, I think they should be separate.

Here two versions of something that might work (one baseball, a bit desatured and the other soccer, a bit more vibrant):





just some ideas that still allow you to have fun w/ the cut outs but don't leave the player just hanging... (fyi - the 1st one, like yours, was done for the winner of a school fund raising auction)

good luck,

C.

shphotos

Okay. It looks like I panicked. Less is more, right? Is this a better start?

Molotov Everything

Oh yea, the picture in picture look works so much better than the people floating in space. But I actually prefer the picture you used in the bottom right in the first one over the one you used for top left in the second if you made it warmer.

Frog Lady

Better... but crop the image in the upper left more and you still need to work on the post-processing of the individual images.

I also think the picture in the bottom right in your 1st attempt would make a good large background picture. It's a good shot of him, good exposure of the face (but as was said, you do need to adjust the white balance/color) and w/ the ball going into the glove and it would fill the space and you wouldn't need to cut any of him off.

One other trick that I try to use (pending the images the parents want to use) is to try to keep the action all oriented in the same direction (w/ the player or action all oriented the same - parents over ruled that for the t-ball poster, but you can see it in the soccer poster), especially for the shots that run along the side.