Mother and Son - Textures

[a-baird-photograph]

This is scary! Rather than clog up Portraits, I dropped down for a Whipping...I've really been working on my in studio portrait lighting, ratios, exposure, etc. (New at it) I've noticed more Texture images have been popping up and wanted to try the water out. Found a textured green rock online, copied into the file, Opacity 12%. Like the green color so didn't play with it. Burned the background (too much? suggestions?) Dodged the eyes, hair, and teeth a bit, minor line cleanup on Mom's neck (her request before going public).

C&C always welcome, specifically on the texture or lighting.

http://a-baird-photograph.smugmug.com/photos/297499336_VaiHe-L.jpg

[DoctorIt]

lighting seems ok enough...

but regardless of anything else, why is everything out of focus? If its an artifact of the treatment, then what a crap treatment! If you just missed the focus, well, the treatment isn't doing it any favors.

what I'm saying: portraits need sharp, in-focus eyes. if that's missing, the whole photo is lost

:dunno

[a-baird-photograph]

lighting seems ok enough...

but regardless of anything else, why is everything out of focus? If its an artifact of the treatment, then what a crap treatment! If you just missed the focus, well, the treatment isn't doing it any favors.

what I'm saying: portraits need sharp, in-focus eyes. if that's missing, the whole photo is lost

:dunno

Perhaps the Gaussian Blur is too heavy? Attached is the original image with the texture (sans Burn, Dodge, Blur). Thanks for the feedback. Keep it coming.

http://a-baird-photograph.smugmug.com/photos/297556466_kUPqE-M-0.jpg

[heatherfeather]

The second one is sooo much better. The burning on the background of the first is not even and I don't really see what it added in the first place. It looks fakey, and not at all professional. The lighting is pretty darn right on, though. If you must gussian blur, make sure and mask out the important details.

Good luck! Keep on working on that photo. It could be awesome, but at this point it is not quite a portfolio piece.

[Miguel Delinquento]

I like the second shot, it is pretty sweet, but imperfect. Great smiles and lovely faces.
Some improvements: the lighting is a little too angled. Note how the area below the mom's right eye is too dark and unmatched with her left. I would think that you could retouch and lighten the right and make both match better. Right now to me the shot makes the mom look either too tired or older than she is. I'd also consider whitening her eyeballs a bit too.
The boy looks quite handsome. I'm vaguely not happy with the darkness on his right side as well.
Since his eyes are not facing the camera, this one would fall into my "B" list. You're real close though.

M

[Halite]

I don't want to be a jerk and make your visit to the Whipping Post so scary you never want to come back. But you can't expect anything other than honesty here.

On the first photo you posted: you're trying too hard to do too much in this image. I recommend you get up the learning curve on composition and lighting before you add textures and new processing techniques.

Second photo: Your intent to show a nice connection between mother and son comes through much better here--it's a sweet moment in their life together that you've captured. Composition and lighting, however, detract from this intent.

Composition:
-unfortunately, the attempt to have them hold their heads against each other makes it look like they're victims of a superglue prank. The pose is too static. So they look stuck.
-The crop on the sides of the image does not benefit from part of his shirt and a strand of her hair creeping out the side of the frame. It tends to pull the eye out of the picture.
-Lining their eyes and mouths up on a downward sloping diagonal gives the image an unbalanced feel.

Lighting:
-It's difficult to make hard side lighting flattering, especially for anyone over 20. Your key light casts harsh shadows and glare on the mother especially, and it emphasizes the texture in her skin. A larger, closer light source would've helped immensely.
-The combination of your key light and hair light have created a weird highlighting effect on the boy's ear. The shadow on the side of his head wouldn't be disconcerting if his ear didn't pop back into view.
-The light on the background behind the boy is brighter than anything else in the image. It's way more than is necessary to provide separation and instead draws the eye away from the subject of the photo.

It's great you're working on your technique and it's especially great that you're brave enough to expose yourself to criticism. Given this level of persistence and thick enough skin, you'll be ramping quickly up the learning curve.