Just a photo

[Joe Dukovac]

Hello Everyone,

I was messing around with my camera the other day and my daughter said she wanted me to take her picture. So we went outside and I asked her where did she wanted daddy to take her picture, and she quickly replied the stair case. She loves to pose for her dad and also loves to run around the house with my old Sony Mavica (which stored all the images on a 1.44 Floppy Disk) pretending (unless the batteries are charged) to take pictures.

I'm still trying to train my eye to look for undesirable items in the background/foreground which are distracting, but practice makes perfect right? (or at least better). Anyhow, I've posted the before and after processing, I hope you enjoy!

By the way, my daughter is 2 1/2 years old......and seems like she's going on 30! :help

Joe

1. Before PP
http://jdukovac.smugmug.com/photos/585487967_rkQAV-XL.jpg

2. After PP
http://jdukovac.smugmug.com/photos/585488149_rJVbB-XL.jpg

[Gringriff]

Hey Joe,

Beautiful daughter and it really looks like she's having fun. Sharp image on a beautiful smile. Great job on taking out that white and black handle thing in the background. Did you consider doing the same with the bucket?

The border is interesting but for my personal tastes it tends to overpower the image a little too much and puts your daughter more in the background. I really like the way she fills the frame in the first image. I like the border but would like it to be smaller.

Lucky you to have a built in model that enjoys it so much. I'm sure you both will have fun taking pictures for years to come.

Andy

[bdcolen]

Hello Everyone,

I was messing around with my camera the other day and my daughter said she wanted me to take her picture. So we went outside and I asked her where did she wanted daddy to take her picture, and she quickly replied the stair case. She loves to pose for her dad and also loves to run around the house with my old Sony Mavica (which stored all the images on a 1.44 Floppy Disk) pretending (unless the batteries are charged) to take pictures.

I'm still trying to train my eye to look for undesirable items in the background/foreground which are distracting, but practice makes perfect right? (or at least better). Anyhow, I've posted the before and after processing, I hope you enjoy!

By the way, my daughter is 2 1/2 years old......and seems like she's going on 30! :help

Joe

1. Before PP
http://jdukovac.smugmug.com/photos/585487967_rkQAV-XL.jpg

2. After PP
http://jdukovac.smugmug.com/photos/585488149_rJVbB-XL.jpg

A couple of thoughts, Joe.
First - What a gorgeous child!
Second - background aside, this is a really lovely image - it looks spontaneous, it captures personality, it's a very nice pose.

As to your background problem. First, the trick is to 'see' the background before you trip the shutter, rather than afterwards. If you can't reposition yourself to get a better background, move your subject to a better setting. BUT - if you have an image such as this, I'd suggest trying a crop - even though I prefer the original post, and then some PS work to try to minimize the intrusion of the background. I offer the following, noting that I am but a mere newbie in terms of PS manipulation, and cannot hold a flash bulb to the masters on this site...

[bdcolen]

Hello Everyone,

I was messing around with my camera the other day and my daughter said she wanted me to take her picture. So we went outside and I asked her where did she wanted daddy to take her picture, and she quickly replied the stair case. She loves to pose for her dad and also loves to run around the house with my old Sony Mavica (which stored all the images on a 1.44 Floppy Disk) pretending (unless the batteries are charged) to take pictures.

I'm still trying to train my eye to look for undesirable items in the background/foreground which are distracting, but practice makes perfect right? (or at least better). Anyhow, I've posted the before and after processing, I hope you enjoy!

By the way, my daughter is 2 1/2 years old......and seems like she's going on 30! :help

Joe

1. Before PP
http://jdukovac.smugmug.com/photos/585487967_rkQAV-XL.jpg

2. After PP
http://jdukovac.smugmug.com/photos/585488149_rJVbB-XL.jpg

A couple of thoughts, Joe.
First - What a gorgeous child!
Second - background aside, this is a really lovely image - it looks spontaneous, it captures personality, it's a very nice pose.

As to your background problem. First, the trick is to 'see' the background before you trip the shutter, rather than afterwards. If you can't reposition yourself to get a better background, move your subject to a better setting. BUT - if you have an image such as this, I'd suggest trying a crop - even though I prefer the original post, and then some PS work to try to minimize the intrusion of the background. I offer the following, noting that I am but a mere newbie in terms of PS manipulation, and cannot hold a flash bulb to the masters on this site...

[Joe Dukovac]

Thanks for the replies!

BD - I'm going to make a greater effort to slow myself down and observe a bit more carefully. I think one of the problems is since it's digital, I can shoot upteen million shots and select the one which turned out the best, whereas I think, I'm not sure, but in the Film days, you didn't have that luxury unless you were a millionare, right? And so my assumption is that photographers carefully chose their shots to make them count......am I off the mark here? If this was the case then I think I should think more in terms of making the shot count more than shooting a ton of the same?

I just get so damn excited when I shoot that I tend to forget some of the basics, like looking at the background first :rofl

Anyhow, I cropped the revised shot a bit and PS'ed out the blue portion that still lingered.

http://jdukovac.smugmug.com/photos/585543321_KckJQ-XL.jpg

[D'Buggs]

IMHO, the SOOC is better. I also concure with bd on a tighter crop to minimize the distractions.... Something I try doing when taking quick shots is to grab 3 (head, head and shoulders, 3/4 or full), then decide in post what is what.

[D'Buggs]

http://jdukovac.smugmug.com/photos/585543321_KckJQ-XL.jpg

Missed this as I was putting my reply together..... MUCH better but think the frame is still a tad powerful. :scratch

[rutt]

I'm surprised BD missed his standard trick. Or perhaps he just doesn't want to sound like a one trick pony. Anyway, what about B&W? It doesn't erase the background issues, but a careful conversion sure makes them less severe to my eye:

http://rutt.smugmug.com/photos/585562156_u32iP-XL.jpg

If you still are bothered by the background and want to do something more natural looking than that frame, follow BD's idea and figure out how to blur the background to get a shallow DOF effect as if you shot with a wide aperture. If you use the quick select tool to select the girl, feather the selection by 5-10 pixels, and then use the lens blur filter (all on a layer), you can get something fairly natural looking. Then scale back the opacity of the layer to make it even more natural. The quick select should take well under 10 minutes if you aren't too OCD (and there really is no need to be.)

[bdcolen]

I'm surprised BD missed his standard trick.

I didn't. I tried it. But, one, the background is still distracting. And two, I like the pink, the flesh tones, and figured this one should stay in color. :wink