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Family Portrait
Jeremy Winterberg
Registered Users Posts: 1,233 Major grins
I took this picture of my family the Sunday after Thanksgiving. I only had about 2 seconds to set this up because I had to jump back into my truck to drive 9 hours from Wisconsin back to Indiana where I am currently going to school (might be transferring at the semester).
I had no light stand, no umbrella... just my wireless trigger and an SB-600, Nikkor 17-55mm 2.8, my D300 and a Tripod. Luckily I remembered to shoot in RAW, because the room was not the brightest room. So I was able to save my butt in PP.
It had to be done then because my brother is home from Iraq for 2 weeks. He won't be there when I get off school for Christmas Break. He surprised us by coming home two days early on leave, (he wasn't supposed to show up till Sunday night but arrived on Friday) So I got to see my brother whom I haven't seen in almost a year for a couple days. We were too busy Friday and Saturday to shoot.
24mm, ISO 400, 1/25s (wish I would've used a faster shutter speed...)
Anyways... Here is the before.... (I'm the one in the white and green shirt - I'm 6'4", so yes I do tower over the rest of my family, my brother doesn't like that because he can't take me down and he's in the Army :rofl, and yes I have a nasty "beard" from No-Shave-November)
And Here is the after...
I combined my own techniques with some posted in here and in the Grad School.
Any info as to what I can do to improve it would help a bunch. I'm not calibrated - (Hopefully will be getting an eye-one calibration tool for Christmas :wink) But on my screen and the eye dropper in photoshop says the yellows and magentas are fairly even. (except on me, dang nab I'm pale!)
I had no light stand, no umbrella... just my wireless trigger and an SB-600, Nikkor 17-55mm 2.8, my D300 and a Tripod. Luckily I remembered to shoot in RAW, because the room was not the brightest room. So I was able to save my butt in PP.
It had to be done then because my brother is home from Iraq for 2 weeks. He won't be there when I get off school for Christmas Break. He surprised us by coming home two days early on leave, (he wasn't supposed to show up till Sunday night but arrived on Friday) So I got to see my brother whom I haven't seen in almost a year for a couple days. We were too busy Friday and Saturday to shoot.
24mm, ISO 400, 1/25s (wish I would've used a faster shutter speed...)
Anyways... Here is the before.... (I'm the one in the white and green shirt - I'm 6'4", so yes I do tower over the rest of my family, my brother doesn't like that because he can't take me down and he's in the Army :rofl, and yes I have a nasty "beard" from No-Shave-November)
And Here is the after...
I combined my own techniques with some posted in here and in the Grad School.
Any info as to what I can do to improve it would help a bunch. I'm not calibrated - (Hopefully will be getting an eye-one calibration tool for Christmas :wink) But on my screen and the eye dropper in photoshop says the yellows and magentas are fairly even. (except on me, dang nab I'm pale!)
Jer
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As I look at the image, I think it is still too magenta, and just a bit blue as well. Here's why....
When I read the pixels on the snow at the lower right corner of the image, it is more magenta than green and more blue than yellow when I measure it in LAB. You can measure the pixels in Photoshop in LAB with the eyedropper as you know. I think the complexions are still too magenta also. I think the image is still just a touch under exposed as well.
My monitor is an Apple Cinema display calibrated with an Eye1D2 colorimeter.
Moderator of the Technique Forum and Finishing School on Dgrin
Thank you for commenting on the magenta and blue. I will try to fix that. I originally measured the pixels with the eye dropper in LAB and got an overall "equal" value, with a tad more magenta than yellow in some of the parts... maybe I'm not reading the results right. I'm not that good with accurate color correction yet.
Considering the circumstances, you did just fine. Everyone looks very happy and that's what really matters.
To further improve I'd:
- make the white balance slightly more blue and more green away from magenta. Your skin is a bit more red (mine too) so we can aim for more neutral tones.
-Increase the clarity +15, though lower the contrast -11
-raise the overall light tones +8
-increase fill light to +25 (watch the noise though)
-using a very small brush touchup and lighten the area around your brother's eyes. A tad too raccoonish for my taste. In Lightroom I upped brightness to +32, lowered saturation, softened clarity. You can vary this quite a bit.
M