More thoughts needed

[emogirl]

3, 6, 17 & 21 are your best images...3 is fantastic...wonderful golden light, good comp and a sharp image.... watch your backgrounds and distracting people and objects...of coarse, they can be cloned out, but im of the mind you shoot it the way you want it!

 

[bryanwhite]

Usually, yes, I do shoot it the way I want it, but I am open to photoshopping. I just don't know yet how to do it yet. Sure, I can add effects, but doing subtle things is still beyond my grasp. Not for long, though!

I'm off to find tutorials and manuals. I love forum search buttons

 

[markc]

I think the two tools to start with are levels and curves. I do a level adjustment on almost every shot to make sure the black point and white point are set correctly. I then use curves if it needs a contrast adjustment.

http://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tutorials/levels.htm
http://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tutorials/photoshop-curves.htm

 

[Garbz]

Ok I didn't have to go to work today so finally had a good look and found something I may be able to comment on. The backgrounds are often very difficult to deal with, however some things were avoidable like on picture #5. Half a step to her left and the distraction would have been covered up.

#2 looks a bit underexposed which could have been dealt with on the camera. That also reminds me about #19. Over exposing on film works reasonably well, but in digital even though I am relatively new to the area, it seems to blow out horribly. I did a bit of searching and it's a common problem of all things digital that manufacturers are trying to fix. One solution though if you are trying to blow out the image is to underexpose (or normally expose which ever makes more sense), and then again use curves to boost the lightness. I did this on some of my pictures and the results while not film looked much better than an overexposed sensor.

As for how to use photoshop, just play with it. Open up all your images and apply curves and levels. Also a good one to learn to use is the channel mixer in greyscale mode for fantastic B&W, and the colour balance sliders.

 

[russrom]

I just wanted to echo what everyone else has said so and also say that you are doing a good jobwith these!

 

[SpaceNut]

Good job, I like these photos. I am not very experienced in portrait photos (yet). I hope to get some experience soon, and I just learned and few things from your work! Thanks for sharing!!