What's Wrong with These?

kdotaylor

I was asked to take pictures of this young family. They are pretty happy with the photos but I'm not satisfied. What is it--are they overexposed? Why do their faces/skin look so washed out? Is there a blue tinge? These were taken on a sunny afternoon, in the shade.
1.


2.


3.


4.


5.


6.


7.

Qarik

4 and 7 are touch over exposed. 5 is a touch underexposed. 4,5,7 have touch blue in them but not really objectionable. 1and 2 are great. I would put a slight vignette on those though

Mitchell

I think the WB issues her are what is throwing you. The poses and crops aren't bad. Shooting in the shade with bright sun around can be a challenge for WB settings. Most of these are a bit blue. #3 has a bit of a green cast likely from the reflection off the grass in close proximity.

#5 is significantly underexposed.

kdotaylor

I believe I had my WB set on auto. When shooting like this, is there a particular setting that would be better?

Demian

Your camera should have a "custom" setting. Get a grey card, take a picture of it where your subject will be, and then use that to set the WB. But be wary of local lights and reflections - as Mitchell said, bright sun on grass tends to leave a green cast.


Personally, I think the biggest problem is putting shaded people against sunlit backgrounds. If you shot them against shaded trees, the faces would pop a lot more. If you really want to shoot them against sunlit trees, use a reflector or something to increase the amount of light on the people.

Demian

Also watch for relative uniformity of light in the background. Spotty light (like on the bushes and grass in #1) can attract attention.

mdruiz

Also if you shot in RAW you can easily change the WB

kshays

I think Mitchell hit the nail on the head. Just like mdruiz suggested, are you shooting in RAW mode? If not then start shooting in RAW as there is so much you can recover and manipulate than in jpg. I like #1 and #2 the best I think and #3 would be great if he was slightly off center more and had a lot more bokeh. That's just my personal style though LIke a few others have mentioned the faces don't pop out at you and demand attention due to the background being so bright. Give some a slight vignette also.

Kevin

kdotaylor

Thank you, all...those are helpful comments. I did shoot raw, but am really just learning to use Lightroom & Photoshop. I did adjust color somewhat, but I can't say I know what I'm doing. I'll keep trying :

kshays

Here is a link that shows a simple way to choose white balance and explains it pretty good in Lightroom.

http://www.adobe.com/designcenter-archive/lightroom/articles/lir1am_whitebal.html

If you search for adobe lightroom tv shows you can get a lot of shows to watch that will help also. Hope this helps.

Kevin

kdotaylor

Thank you, Kevin!

kshays

Anytime!

zoomer

Cute shots, as mentioned your color is all over the place.
In lightroom select shots in groups of equal light/color and click on something white with the eyedropper, should fix them. You can do entire groups with one click, auto sync.

Jpeg and Raw are equally editable in Lightroom except for highlight recovery.

Shade in a predominately green area will always mess with your color...but as mentioned can normally fix it with the eyedropper. Sometimes it can be very resistant to fixing however then you can play with the white balance, but if you do that you can end up even more messed up if you don't know what you are doing.

If you know going in that you are going to have color problems don't shoot on Auto pick any of the other white balance options that way you get uniform color, then when you correct with the eyedropper in Lightroom they will all get the same "fix".

Hackbone

Shooting RAW is just a process to learn just like learning "photography". With lightroom you have what you need to process the raw file to jpg. There are terrific videos to help you with this.

http://www.jkost.com/lightroom.html This lady has a series of videos to help explain lightroom .

kdotaylor

Thanks!