Nice light, crappy background.

[Khaos]

Don't you hate taking candids and loving the shot of the person but hating the setting?

I like the light in this one but hate the hutch in the back ground. I liked the close crop less. Plus I already cropped out the person to the left that was holding him.

http://khaos.smugmug.com/photos/21110323-L.jpg


Here I love the expression, but hate the background.

http://khaos.smugmug.com/photos/21110371-L.jpg

[canonguy]

Like the light. I am not fond of the expressions however. Kind of lifeless.

[photoshow]

Cute kid and I feel just the oposite about the expressions. The first image seems contemplative and the second one says to me "I am curious and I do not know the answer"

Since you shot them with such a full DOF you could always take them into photoshop and apply a gaussian blur layer over the top, then take a soft edged eraser and erase the layer over the boy leaving the bg with a nicely blured bg.

It would take some work but it can be done. You could also do it by creating a careful path around the boy with the pentool, feathering it by 1/2 pixel, selecting the inverse and blurring the selected area in the new layer.

Once you have a path around the boy ypou can replace the BG with about anything you want.

[Mitchell]

I really like the lighting on these shots. I am also constantly perplexed about backdrop issues around my house. Whenever taking casual candids of my kids, there is invariably some household clutter behind them that I find annoyingly distracting. I think we need to learn to accept this as the cinema verite look into our daily lives. If I do get an expression that I really love, the gaussian blur to the background is often helpful.


mitch

[Khaos]

Since you shot them with such a full DOF you could always take them into photoshop and apply a gaussian blur layer over the top, then take a soft edged eraser and erase the layer over the boy leaving the bg with a nicely blured bg.


I allowed for the camera to pick the aperture on both, and the first is 2.2 and the second 3.5.

While the second could of gone lower with a higher ISO, the first was pretty much where it should of been.

That's the limits of using a wider angle lens like the 35. I had the 50 in my bag, I probably should of tried that. My 85 should be here tomorrow. That might help in getting more background blur in close ups.

Thanks.

[bfjr]

I really like the 1st one, and can't see a problem with cropping tighter. Maybe up to the hinge :dunno
Good work with hard light (it's never bad :D)

[leebase]

Crop it some more. Dont' be a slave to the 4x6 photo ratio :)

Lee

[leebase]

That's the limits of using a wider angle lens like the 35. I had the 50 in my bag, I probably should of tried that. My 85 should be here tomorrow. That might help in getting more background blur in close ups.
Thanks.
Well yes...but your son seems to be right in front, practically touching, the background. Even with the 85 f1.8 it'd be hard to blur the background. Not to mention that the 85 on a 1.6x body is a fairly long lens for indoors.

Crop it -- or do the blur thing.

Lee