Senior Picture

[JohnR]

I took this one of my nephew as a possible senior picture.

I'm terrible at Photoshop and the whole cloning tool thing, so I know the leaves look terrible. Dang...I really need to work on that!

But other than that, what do you all think? Color..composition...etc.

As far as smiling and the squinting, my nephew doesn't like to cooperate much and he hates his photo taken. So I had to do with what I had.

http://www.orangeinsider.org///_DSC0048a.jpg

[wxwax]

John, I think you already have ID'd the issues with the shot. The pose and expression aren't the warmest or most flattering. The background is inconsistent. Would be much better if shot with a wide aperature and a naturally blurry background. He could stand a little boost in saturation and warming, too.

[tmlphoto]

Here goes....
- You are correct about the cloning, really bad :).
- Looks like a very short focal length ( his elbow is almost as big as his head) I would use a longer lens.
- Fill flash would help bring out the eyes or use reflector
- pose and composition are fine, although a little bit of turn of the body and/or head might make it more interesting.
- lighting is flat, reflector or gobo might help

Hope this doesn't sound too harsh, trying to keep it concise.

[Andy]

John, I think you already have ID'd the issues with the shot. The pose and expression aren't the warmest or most flattering. The background is inconsistent. Would be much better if shot with a wide aperature and a naturally blurry background. He could stand a little boost in saturation and warming, too.

:agree waxy's spot on.

[Andy]

Here goes....
- You are correct about the cloning, really bad :).
- Looks like a very short focal length ( his elbow is almost as big as his head) I would use a longer lens.
- Fill flash would help bring out the eyes or use reflector
- pose and composition are fine, although a little bit of turn of the body and/or head might make it more interesting.
- lighting is flat, reflector or gobo might help

Hope this doesn't sound too harsh, trying to keep it concise.

:nod :nod

[JohnR]

Ooops. I totally forgot about this! Thanks guys for the input. Here is one with less photoshopping.

I can't correct a lot of it (smile, eyes, pose, etc) due to him being 2 1/2 hours away. At least not yet.

Images deleted by Moderator (The Enforcer). Read the rules, sticky at the top of this forum. If you want PS help, post in Software or People forums

[andymillson]

I think that with guys, its sometimes better to not have them smile! A lot of us do not like to smile even at the best of times, and when 'forced' into it then the look is false, and the hoow pose artificial.

I would try again (if you can get back together) and have him with a straight face, no smile, he might fell more relaxed, and the pose will come out better

Andy

[Dach]

One thing you could do is, instead of cloning out parts of the background, just blur the whole thing, to give a depth-of-field effect. There are a few ways to do it, but the quick and dirty is:

Select your subject (You might need to include the tree).
Right-click and choose Feather (5 px ought to do it)
Right-click again and choose Layer via Copy
Select only the background layer in the layers palette
Gaussian Blur the background to taste.
Playing around with it for a while can fix at least that one problem with the pic, which as you pointed out, is what you'll have to do since you can't easily reshoot. I don't really have a problem with the pose or the color (though the Smugmug rendition looks better in my opinion, but it's not necessarily correct).

[Cantfeelmyfingers]

The backround in the original is much more satisfying to the eye than the cloned one. The pose is alright I suppose.. The one thing that bothers me though is that its cropped too tight against his elbows.. it'd be nice if the frame were a little lower on his torso.. Other than that though, it looks to me like a senior pic. Jamie.

[morrisphotography2003]

adjust the midtones with the burn tool,set it at 75% and get the tree trunk, just a little, the leaves to the top left to even them with the other leaves on the right side and lightly hit the tree with the red leaves just to give a little more depth to the photo. This might give you what you are looking for, maybe not but it is worth a try.
Bob.

[benji70]

Your original is better than the photoshopped image to me. I would do something about that large bright circle next to his head. Maybe burn it in a little, or fill it with a gradient light blue to look like a nice blue sky. I would also have left a little more cropping room or not have cropped it so tight.

Brad

[johno]

Good questions. I also have noticed that when I post a picture link through smugmug it canges the color.

I noticed it with my last challenge entry. I had to upload my shot to my server and link from there and not smugmug. :dunno

peace.
johno~

[rutt]

Man, just wait until the enforcer shows up here! Why not start a thread on the DD forum and I might even play too.

[DavidTO]

Man, just wait until the enforcer shows up here! Why not start a thread on the DD forum and I might even play too.


The Enforcer is here!

I went through and deleted a bunch of images. The Whipping Post is not the place to work through PS iterations, the other forums are for that. This forum is for placing your best work and letting it stand or fall on its own merits. If you want help with post processing, put it in the Software forum. If you do, I'm sure that Rutt will be happy to help you make that white sky blue. He's got a great solution for that.

Keep on posting here, it's a great discipline to let your image speak for itself and get feedback from our community. This is the only place you can do that without the darkroom rats chiming in on how to do it better. Not that the rats don't have a lot of great info, but we need to keep this forum true to its original intent.

Thanks!