I promise that I'm not going to make this blog all about photography, but I saw this and just had to take part in it. IHeartFaces is doing some constructive feedback today, and I'm always up for some help!!
I just took this yesterday. I love Abbi's eyes, but since they are so dark, I often have a hard time capturing the light and sparkle that are in them. But I was able to here - and I think that is why I love this photograph so much! But what I don't like? I always try to focus on the eyes, but since I was inside and having to use a low aperture, I feel like the rest of her face is out of focus. I feel like I got the eyes, but I'm wanting the whole face in focus.
Photo info - f2.2, 1/50, ISO 1600, 50mm. Used photoshop CS4 - but very minimally (just to adjust levels a bit.)
If you are one of the people that regularly read here, please feel free to skip past this post. I'm just looking for some constructive criticism to make myself better!
7 comments:
I think you're doing great at your photography. Especially your food photogprahy. You seem to understand light pretty well too. :) I'd be proud of yourself. As far as this picture, the only thing that you might have been able to change it not to shoot it with Abbi's legs straight back. It kind of looks like her legs are coming out of her head but you might also just be able to vignette the outside to make it not so obvious. I am not into changing pictures much from their original either. I like to do as much in the camera so I don't have to play in photoshop. I actually like the small apeture setting.
If you want the whole face in focus but have to have a wide open aperture (due to low lighting), try moving back a few steps. You'll have to crop the photo later, but stepping away from the subject helps you get a deeper depth of field.
I have no constructive criticism to offer, but I just had to speak up and say that I love the picture! You definitely got the sparkle in her eyes.
Hey, Marshall here from I Heart Faces. First of all, what a cute baby! I think you really captured the sparkle and energy of this little one. As far as your comment about wanting the whole face to be in focus, it's not going to be unless you close your aperture down more (bigger number). Personally though, I think the way you've shot it here is great. The eyes are perfectly in focus, and they are the stars of the show.
I grabbed your image and put it into Photoshop to see if I could jazz it up a bit. The first thing I did was crop. The eyes are the big draw and I wanted to focus in more on them. Here's the link to my version if you want to look at it while I talk about what I did.
http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y248/fxmixer/joshanddebra.jpg
Your exposure was very good so I didn't need to make any adjustments there. I wanted to draw the eye even more towards the center, so added a vignette to darken all around the face. The legs and diaper were still a bit bright for me, so I used the burn tool to tone those down.
Next, I thought the eyes could pop a bit more so I duplicated the layer and increased the brightness about 10 percent. I then masked that off and revealed just the eyes.
My final step was to even out the skin just a tad. I made another copy of the background layer and applied a Gaussain blur at about 1.5. I then masked that off and, using a very light brush, ran it over some parts of the face.
I hope this gives you some food for thought about this and other images in the future. Feel free to email me with questions or comments. Cheers!
what a sweet face! love the sparkle in those eyes! :)
I think she's gorgeous and the picture looks great, but I am no expert and can't really offer any advice. She is a doll though!
I have no comments on editing the photo, I just wanted to say that if your baby was a little tanner with slightly chubbier cheeks, I would've totally thought this was a photo of my niece - they've got the same eyes, eyebrows, and hairdo, I kid you not!
So from a somewhat biased standpoint - what a cutie pie!
Post a Comment