Greetings from a wanna be photoshopper

[Sheyene29]

Hello All

My name is Mona, I am from beautiful British Columbia Canada.

For as long as I can remember I've always been fascinated with photography and looking at the beautiful images professional photographers take (I even watched America's next top Model just so I could see how the photographers turned their images into art ).

I've been (very) slowly acquiring the photography equipment I really want and still have a ways to go, although I'm sure it never really ends. I have been a sponge learning and relearning photography but it seems sometimes as I'm aging it takes me a little longer. Sometimes I look at my images SOOC and I am very proud of myself, other times I think what the heck am I doing...lol.

Anyways, what finally brings me to your forum is the knowledge that most images (unless you're Ansel Adams) don't just end at the press of the shutter and so here I am to learn and absorb all information and lessons I can about post processing, and the one thing I've learned so far is what a learning curve it is . I look forward to learning from you all, and seeing what your vision for some of my photo's are as sometimes I have a writers block.

I am looking forward to meeting you all!

Mona

I attached the wrong SOOC photo of this little guy, but this is from a shoot I did this past week and a photo I was proud of. The original to the edit (the first photo) looks identical to the one I mistakingly attached other than where the little guy was looking. Please feel free to critique my edit, and my photography as well I didn't know how to fix the exposure of just the little guy as I did like the exposure of the rest of the photo...

 

[IamSam]

Hello Mona and welcome to PSG. We have some wonderful Photographers in this forum and I'm sure you will learn a tremendous amount from them.

Aging? If the 29 in your username is your age..........your just a kidlet.

 

[Tom Mann]

Hi Sheyene / Mona - Welcome to PSG.

Advice about producing good photographic images (ie, both the photography part and the Photoshop part) comes in two flavors: Basic and advanced. You clearly are beyond the basic stage (ie, getting a reasonable exposure, get the subject in focus, control DoF, control camera and subject motion, basic color adjustments, etc.). Basic advice is mostly technical in nature and straightforward (ie, most people will agree on what needs to be done at this level).

In contrast, "advanced" advice can not be given in such a straightforward way because the person giving the advice absolutely must know the artistic intent and preferences of the person seeking advice before one can say anything helpful. Unfortunately, there are lots of people on the web who will immediately quote "rules" even to obviously advanced students, e.g., you didn't use the rule of thirds, you don't have the subject looking out of the frame, you shouldn't stray too far from "reality" (whatever that means), you shouldn't use static symmetry, etc. etc., but breaking these "rules" might have been exactly what the photographer had in mind.

Even if one knows exactly what's in the heart and mind of an advanced photographer, advanced advice almost always means that some recommendations are likely to involve fundamental changes to the photo, such as changes in the composition or lighting. Almost without exception, such changes almost always produce much better results if they are done before or at the time of pressing the shutter release button, not afterwards in post-processing.

So, IMHO, when you solicit advice in this area, the best you can expect is either: (a) a lot of soul-searching preliminary questions about your intent (which you may not have even verbalized to yourself yet); or (b) a disclaimer to the effect, "I don't know exactly what you had in mind, but if my job was to take a photo of this subject in this environment, here's what I would have done."

I also feel strongly that since photography is a visual art, "here's what I would have done" advice is best conveyed visually, not in narrative form, because the latter is always subject to different personal interpretations. For example, w.r.t. your photo(s), if I would suggest in words to darken the sky, do you know whether I mean to darken it in such a way that the contrast is retained, further enhanced, or decreased. The same choices applies to color when darkening a sky. So, if I have a suggestion, I will almost always try to accompany it with a quickie draft version of the tweaks I am suggesting. In some cases, this may be almost impossible to do (eg, change the plane of focus), but when it is possible, I try to give a quick visual example, consistent with the amount of time I have to devote to a freebie critique / suggestion.

------

Now that the preliminaries are over, and not having a clue as to your your artistic preferences and vision or any preferences stated by your customer, here are my observations / suggestions w.r.t your 2nd image:

a) Low contrast, unimportant, big bright areas attract the eye of the viewer away from the subject. CONTRASTY big bright areas are even more effective at distracting the viewer. In addition, people expect skies to have some trace of blue in them, even completely overcast, quasi-whiteout skies like you often get in coastal areas. If viewers don't see these so-called "memory colors", it's just one more thing that's drawing their attention away from the subject.

b) In environmental, on-location portraits like yours, the subject is the most important thing. Everything else is there only to suggest a sense of place and should not compete with the subject for the viewer's attention. Unfortunately, while vaguely interesting to a machinery nerd type of viewer, IMHO, the piece of rusting, abandoned equipment in your photo is attracting way much too much attention.

So, how would I implement these suggestions:

a) Use an off-camera flash with softbox or umbrella to add extra light to the subject. In post processing, I would decrease the contrast (both local and global) of the background. If you want to get fancy, with the flash and umbrella in place and turned on, camera on a tripod, take a shot of just the background using a ND gradient filter to help tame the brightness of the sky. Then, pull the ND filter off, have the boy step in, and composite the two exposures. If necessary, drop the local contrast in the sky (instead of enhancing it) so that the viewer's eyes are not attracted to it.

b) Move both the boy, camera, and auxiliary light/umbrella a few feet further away from the abandoned equipment so that the boy is a bit larger and the machinery is considerably smaller in the frame.

Here's a quickie sketch of the direction I would take your photo if I were asked to shoot this boy in this environment. If I had complete control, I would reduce the visual importance of the rusting equipment much further than I indicated in my sketch. I would consider completely removing it because the boy isn't interacting with it in any way, so it's not at all clear to the viewer why it's in the photo. As a counter example, if this was a photo of a young man for an environmental cleanup site, sure, let it remain, let him lean on, or at least look at it with a disapproving expression, but for Pete's sake, this little kid isn't even playing on it. All it's doing is either (a) competing for attention (when bright), or (b) be a looming mysterious hulk in the background (when muted).

Just my $0.02.

HTH,

Tom M

 

[Tom Mann]

... and here's a quickie, 5 minute attempt to show what the photo might look at without so much metal. Pls. excuse the lousy cloning job on the OOF flowers, but this was just to give you a general idea of selecting a different area in the field to place the subject. Also, FWIW, I have a slight personal preference to go very traditional and have him face into the frame, the opposite of the way he currently is facing.

In addition, I would take a lot more pix, getting his attention using various methods while doing so so as to elicit a somewhat less "spacey" expression, either with direct eye contact with the camera or to something that is occupying him (ie, a prop), but again, that's just my personal preference.

Cheers,

Tom M

 

[Tom Mann]

... and to make comparison of this with the original easier (instead of having to scroll up and down the page), here's another copy of the original I worked from.

-- T

 

[Tom Mann]

... as you can see, even ignoring the obvious differences in brightness, color, and texture of the sky, I opted for a very, very different overall composition -- more of a classical subject-in-front-of-a-nice-background composition that one could hang over the fireplace as a large canvas print rather than a subject-immersed-in-his-surroundings composition that may be more appropriate to illustrate a blog describing the family's latest hike in the high country.

To each their own, LOL.

Cheers,

Tom M

 

[Sheyene29]

LOL, IAMSAM, that is actually an old screen name that I've used since....well, since I was 29 lol. About 12 years has passed since then but I don't like having to remember too many logins and passwords so I tend to keep them pretty close.

And thank you so much Tom Mann for your very thorough and welcoming post I've got to read it a couple of times just to absorb the info

I look forward to all the information I'll be learning from here.

 

[IamSam]

Well even at 41 I have a few years on ya! I understand about the logins, if I don't write them down it's game over! Thank goodness for "remember password?"

Yeah, that Tom is a plethora of information...........your in the right place if you want to learn. Happy reading!

 

[Sheyene29]

I just wanted to add....people photography doesn't interest me one iota lol....My main interest really is in landscape photography (with a great emphasis on the weather) and night photography (particularly light painting).

My friend knew I have a really good camera and that I like photography and so her natural instinct was that I must want to take pictures of her and her family to practice lol, and I'm sure she won't be the last to think that. As I'm far from a pro, and yes, I do need all the practice and inspiration I can get right now, I agreed but was so nervous I was almost in a panic attack as I know she was hoping to get some frame worthy shots (and no, no money was exchanged).

The day was very windy, drizzly yet almost warm and her son whom had never met me was extremely shy. It took him almost half way through our shoot before he started to warm up to me and would actually face in the general direction of the camera (got tonnes of shots of the back of his head lol). It wasn't until I took them down to the river and got him to throw rocks into the water that he figured I was alright enough to at least look at me lol.....

In my nervousness I forgot to check all my settings and ended up taking the whole shoot in ISO1250 , however, thankfully the quality of my camera allowed me some forgiveness.

In all the craziness, nervousness, & less than ideal situation I did walk away having learned just a little more. So the day was not a loss, and if she asks me to do family pictures again I will probably agree, even if it's to prove that I improved

I took about 820 shots, and walked away with only about 12 that I feel I could work with . No big deal though thanks to digital photography....a much cheaper medium to learn on . I guess my goal is to take as many shots someday and to one day walk away with more and more shots I love.

Oh, and I should also add.....I have one lens A Nikon Nifty 50 f1.4 Love her, even if she's a tad restrictive

 

[Tom Mann]

Hey, thanks for the additional info, Mona. Some thoughts:

While I now know that you aren't that interested in portraiture, lots of times a situation like this will land on your doorstep and you don't have much choice but to take it, if for no other reason than to preserve your friendship with the kid's mom, LOL. So, it pays to build up your skills in other photographic specialties. FWIW, I started out in photography decades ago, and just like you, was only interested in landscapes. However, as I've gotten older and realized that with the press of a button on your computer, now one can find on the web hundreds of fantastic pix of almost every scenic point known to man, I've moved almost completely to people photography, particularly, event work, with a little bit of product photography thrown in.

With respect to taking so many (ie, 820) shots, IMHO, you are making a lot of extra work for yourself just in then having to sort through that many pix. In fact, that technique goes by the somewhat derogatory name, "shotgun shooting". These days, I take many fewer pix than I used to, and now, I don't trip the shutter until I can see the whites of their eyes, they don't have a piece of food in their mouth, or would look awful for some other reason, LOL.

WRT shooting at ISO = 1250, don't worry about it. As you pointed out, that's no big deal for your d750, and with the heavy overcast / limited light, ISO = 1250 gave you a nice kid-stopping shutter speed ( 1/1600 sec) and a nice, middle of the road aperture (f/6.3). My default ISO under similar lighting is usually around ISO 800, and that's only a half stop less sensitive than your setting.

WRT the kid being shy around you, my recommendation is to not even get the camera out until you have (a) demonstrated to him your friendship with his mom, and (b), if possible, played with him for a good hour or so and got him pitching stones or whatever else he likes to do, and then, try this: In a voice that he can easily hear, "ask" his mom, "Hey, this is so much fun, you mind if I take some pix of your son while we are playing?" Then, act all goofy, lay down on the ground, etc. That way, he doesn't think you are a stranger whose main purpose in being there is to be gunning for him, LOL. Also, as I mentioned before, props are a god-send for situations like this. Next time, bring along a kite, your dog, a bunch of "special stream-skipping" rocks, a fake Sasquatch foot (LOL), or almost anything else that he isn't familiar with but which will engage him.

Cheers,

Tom M