Want to improve.. What do you think?

DrDavid · December 3, 2007

I took this picture a few days ago; and did some post-processing with it to make the background fade away a bit more, adjust colors, and some bad highlights on my wife (and, cropped it). What do you think? Is it any good?

jeffreaux2 · December 3, 2007

Hi Doc.......welcome to DGRIN.

Well

I will start by saying that I tried to go to your homepage to view the EXIf info to see exactly what equipment you were using, but most everything there was locked down pretty tight........thus I am limited in helping by not knowing what capabilities you have as far as camera lense or flash etc.

Anyway, as far as the composition and cropping I think this image is fine. I am not a fan of faking a shallow depth of field in post processing. It usually looks much better if done at capture time with a larger aperature opening. Again, if I knew what lenses you had at your disposal I could offer more advise on that, but either way I would suggest using AV mode on your Rebel so that you are in control of Aperature and Depth of field. It is still pretty much automatic as the camera will adjust all other settings except for ISO. I can see tell tale signs around the frame of the chair and edge of the cake where you either went too far with an eraser tool or mask in your attept to blur the BG and keep thos things sharp. That is my spill on faking bokeh. There is the issue of the window(?) to the right and behind them that is a tad distracting. A slightly different angle could possibly have excluded this from the shot.

Color. Mom's skin is RED, and there is a touch also on your daughter. Read all of this....... http://www.smugmug.com/help/skin-tone and play around with the tutorial. If you shot RAW, you can play around with color temps a bit more. If nothing else, some desaturation might help. I get red skin on my XTI if I shoot people in landscape picture style....which boosts saturation more that portrait or standard style. Even if you get the skin right, there will still be the clash of clothing colors....and this in itself would make me lean towards trying for a nice BW or duotone conversion.

Light. It is obviously a flash lit shot. The built in flash is moderatly useful for fill flash and little else. You could have bounced off a ceiling with a hotshoe flash, and with practice it may not even be obvious that you used a flash.

That is what I think.
Your last qustion....is it a good photo?.....

I say absolutely!!! YES!!!

pyrtek · December 3, 2007

You can do wonders to this photograph with just two adjustment layers.
One levels layer selectively applied to just the pretty ladies to lighten them
up, and one hue/saturation layer to reduce the red color. Something like this
(I'll remove it as soon as you've had a look):

DrDavid · December 3, 2007

For those who want it... exif is here

It was shot with a 50mm f/1.4 (but, was set at f/3.5 for the shot). I also used a 580EX speedlite for the flash.

I know I should use the Av setting a bit more; it's just hard to remember in the heat of the moment to change the settings.

As far as RAW goes; I've started using it. I'm quite impressed by how much control I get with it.

Here is one that was shot with RAW; the only changes made were to the exposure, and to set the White Balance.

Exif here

Again, speedlite 580EX, 50mm f/1.4 @ 2.8..

DrDavid · December 3, 2007

pyrtek wrote:

You can do wonders to this photograph with just two adjustment layers.
One levels layer selectively applied to just the pretty ladies to lighten them
up, and one hue/saturation layer to reduce the red color. Something like this
(I'll remove it as soon as you've had a look):

That's much closer to the photo as shot (they were both much lighter). I thought a slightly darker image would be nicer... I guess the question is this; is it better to get the faces bright and well-distinguished, or, make the whole image artistic/nice to look at... i.e. give the feeling of being lit by a flickering fire in the background, etc..

I guess I'm still getting the feel for what's good

mercphoto · December 3, 2007

DrDavid wrote:

Here is one that was shot with RAW; the only changes made were to the exposure, and to set the White Balance.

Exif here

Again, speedlite 580EX, 50mm f/1.4 @ 2.8..

To my eye, you've made the image under-exposed and the white balance is way off.

DrDavid · December 3, 2007

Here's the same image, but, with less of my messing with it...

(The gallery all these photos live in is here: http://DrDavid.smugmug.com/gallery/3930064/1/228269627 )

mercphoto · December 3, 2007

DrDavid wrote:

Here's the same image, but, with less of my messing with it...

Better exposure, but I still think the color balance is wrong.

pyrtek · December 3, 2007

There's something seriously wrong with your white balance in both photos.
I would recommend a white balance reference card (like WhiBal) for pictures
like this. At the very least you would learn what a "correct" white balance looks
like. Note that "correct" doesn't necessarily mean "best", but it's usually the
best starting point for any subjective manipulation of WB.

z_28 · December 3, 2007

Maybe something like that will fit your taste ?

DrDavid · December 3, 2007

I'm sure I'm driving y'all nuts, but, I am trying

The reason I think it's so hard is that I used the flash while pointed straight up; and the little white plastic bit of the 580EX was extended. I was shooting indoors, with flourescent lights illuminating the area (plus a bounced flash). Auto WB gives a blue tint to the photo (kinda funky, but, totally way off).

I think this one is better.. I cleaned up the image a bit more as well, but, the WB... Well, I think it's right.. But, without a reference point, how does one figure out the correct white balance (where the light was from many strange sources)?

Thanks for the help!

pyrtek · December 3, 2007

DrDavid wrote:

I'm sure I'm driving y'all nuts, but, I am trying

This is much better.

DrDavid wrote:

But, without a reference point, how does one figure out the correct white balance (where the light was from many strange sources)?

And why, pray tell, do you think I suggested a WhiBal card?

DrDavid · December 3, 2007

pyrtek wrote:

This is much better.

And why, pray tell, do you think I suggested a WhiBal card?

Thanks! I might have to look into one of those cards; they seem pretty neat.

Apart from the WB issues, etc.. Do you think the image quality/composition is good enough to try to sell? i.e. Does it still look like an amateur photo? Or, does it look like it was done by someone who is a pro? Is there something else I should be doing to make my images more visually appealing?

Want to improve.. What do you think?

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