I need your help. This is driving me EFFING INSANE.

[LCLimages]

Honestly - what first jumped out at me is it looks like her head is too small for her face. All the other nits people have pointed out stand, but I didn't see them upon first glance. To me, it looks like her eyes are too high on her face, or the top of her head is squished... hard to describe and totally off base with what everyone else said and she's still a pretty girl no matter what

 

[The_Traveler]

e.rose....first, I think she's a lovely model and that's a lovely portrait.

Now, what bugs me upon immediately looking at the photo is how damn busy it is compositionally. You've got circles on the top/sweater. You've got the pattern on the drapes to the left. You've got strong vertical and horizontal lines that are bright (so eye-catching) above the model. And then there's that tiny speck of turquoise that grabs your eye off of her charm bracelet. And it's not that each of them is bad, it's that all of them in combination makes it busy. There's just a lot of shapes happening in this shot that compete for your eye.

I think it would have been much stronger if
--you could eliminate the drapes to the viewer's left, OR
--eliminate the blinds above the model, OR
--put her in a more passive (or monotone) top, OR
--you eliminated the small chunk of turquoise off of the bracelet.

That's my 2 cents.

I agree with Joe.
I think
She has a gorgeous face but there are so many other distractions pulling my eye away.
Her elbow is clipped, yet there is lots of unnecessary room on the other side so it looks like a framing error.
Those light drapes with hundreds of little semaphores waving to me are too much.
Eliminate some of the distraction (especially including that green thing) and crop to 4 x 5 so that her right side is not so loose in the frame.
All the other little things can be fixed once some of the distractions are gone.

 

[sm4him]

e.rose....first, I think she's a lovely model and that's a lovely portrait.

Now, what bugs me upon immediately looking at the photo is how damn busy it is compositionally. You've got circles on the top/sweater. You've got the pattern on the drapes to the left. You've got strong vertical and horizontal lines that are bright (so eye-catching) above the model. And then there's that tiny speck of turquoise that grabs your eye off of her charm bracelet. And it's not that each of them is bad, it's that all of them in combination makes it busy. There's just a lot of shapes happening in this shot that compete for your eye.

I think it would have been much stronger if
--you could eliminate the drapes to the viewer's left, OR
--eliminate the blinds above the model, OR
--put her in a more passive (or monotone) top, OR
--you eliminated the small chunk of turquoise off of the bracelet.

That's my 2 cents.

I've been waiting to see if anyone else said what first struck me. I really, really don't like the combination of that pattern on the drapes and the dots on her sweater.
Also, one of the sweater dots seems like it's actually in her hair instead and looks odd.

I didn't notice that colored charm at all until Joe mentioned it, but now that kinda bugs me too.

On the other hand, all of those things only seem to really bother me at first glance. Once I settle in to looking at the photo, I like it.

 

[D-B-J]

Wow. It's amazing how many nit picks we can find in a photo... Sad almost.

 

[Heather Koch]

Her bracelet?? That is the first thing that stuck out to me...

 

[sm4him]

Oops. Posted in wrong thread!

 

[JoeW]

Wow. It's amazing how many nit picks we can find in a photo... Sad almost.

Nah, not at all.

When I'm talking to newbie photographers (and they want to know about the rules of a good photograph), I consistently have two answers. I quote that famous photographer and pirate Captain Barbosa who says in Pirates of the Caribbean.... "Rules? They're more like guidelines really." And then I point out that there are thousands of compositional rules....and they often conflict--you can't follow them all simultaneously. So what makes photography an art and not a science is the photographer's decision about what rules to break and which ones to follow.

So, all of the nit picking...it's just each of us as artists talking about what rules we'd apply (and which ones we'd ignore) with this photo.

 

[e.rose]

I like the blue-ish matte look, but I think it could be reduced just a little bit. I think it makes the shadows blend together a little too much to the point where some depth is lost in the hair and the sweater. Otherwise, I think this is beautiful.

As for something that may be bugging you; I noticed a small dark spot on the under side of her wrist. It caught my attention, but doesn't really bother me.

Thanks Dan! :sillysmi:

Full disclosure... you were the one I was waiting for.

It was the coloring that had me reeling for a while. I asked a friend a question, and it turned into a 3 way discussion between him and his artist friend, all with different ideas and I couldn't let it go, hahahaha.

In the end, I came home, looked at it the next day, took a piece of advice from the one friend, ditched everything else, and decided I was good with it.

Since you are usually the one with something to say about the coloring in my images, I was curious as to what you thought, since no one else mentioned anything about it. Although what you mentioned, isn't what was bothering me about it.

Between you and my friend... you always seem to mention a "lime green", and he always thinks I make things "too yellow", haha. So I was desperately trying to avoid both of those while working on processing this.

The only thing that distracts me is she still has her clothes on

Gross, dude.

She's a kid.

I work with high school seniors.

This is more of a dissection then a C&C lol


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It is, haha. But that's okay, that's kind of what I asked for.

Is it the missing pin light?

What is a pin light?

All these could be fixed in PS eRose. Do you want to spend the time to do it? Do you?


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Nope.

3 fingered hand , weird Bat plane looking thingy lower left ?

Hey, I like this portrait so....yea go get a sandwich

Bat plane?

OH, the *table*?

Yeah, like I mentioned in a previous comment, I had this cropped before I re-edited it. I just haven't gotten a chance to do it again. That's one of the last things I do when I'm editing.

It's a good portrait, and that's not my area, so I can't really nitpick on lighting, posing, etc., which all seem basically OK to me. The one thing that struck me is that it feels like it needs to be cropped quite a bit on the left. It's tight elsewhere and the drapes are just a distraction, imo.

See above comment

Honestly - what first jumped out at me is it looks like her head is too small for her face. All the other nits people have pointed out stand, but I didn't see them upon first glance. To me, it looks like her eyes are too high on her face, or the top of her head is squished... hard to describe and totally off base with what everyone else said and she's still a pretty girl no matter what

I don't... I'm not sure... I mean, I can't fix that? I can't fix her face...

I mean I *could*, but that's not what I do for senior portraits. They get skin retouching, not facial reconstruction. I save that for my models, not young, impressionable, girls with enough self-image issues.

Wow. It's amazing how many nit picks we can find in a photo... Sad almost.

Why is it sad?

I never expect to post an image that *no one* finds fault with.

Everyone has different tastes and opinions. I've learned to filter through the stuff that I actually care about vs. the stuff that I feel is just too rigidly "inside the box" or a matter of taste.

Oops. Posted in wrong thread!

Huh???

 

[e.rose]

Thanks everyone, for taking the time to comment!!

 

[Vince.1551]

This image deserved enough of your time and I don't feel that it justifies any more time to be spent on it


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[e.rose]

This image deserved enough of your time and I don't feel that it justifies any more time to be spent on it


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Yeah, I'm done, haha. I just have to clone out sweater fuzzies which will take two seconds, and crop it down.

 

[sm4him]

Oops. Posted in wrong thread!

Huh???

Yeah, that was confusing, wasn't it? So, here's what happened:
I was at lunch, and tried to view TPF on my phone. On tapatalk. Which I've used maybe 4 times and have yet to really figure out. I don't like it much.
So after looking in on several threads, I decided to post a picture of my lunch on one of them. Only I posted it in the wrong thread.

THEN, I couldn't figure out how to just delete the post from my phone. After fumbling around for a minute, I did finally find a way to edit it, though.

And I figured it was better to have a mystic "Posted in wrong thread" message than a picture of my LUNCH in your thread.

I was gonna come in and delete the whole thing once I got back to the office, but I guess there's no point in that now.

P.S. Lunch was good though.

 

[Geaux]

Landscape...ugh

 

[e.rose]

Landscape...ugh

That rarely ever bothers me.

I'm one of those annoying landscape/portrait rebels.

 

[DanOstergren]

Wow. It's amazing how many nit picks we can find in a photo... Sad almost.

She literally asked us to pick it to pieces to try and solve what was bothering her about the photo. Calm yourself.