A few kiddie portraits

[Kanikula]

1.

2.

3.

It sooooooooooooo hard keeping them still!!! LOL

 

[bullshark]

Great shots, I especially love the second one.. I have no idea how you deal with keepin them still.. You have more patience than I do.. lol

 

[Alpha]

The composition is great, but they're too dark (though not underexposed). There is also way too much middle gray. I would re-process these. You really need to pull those tones out.

 

[LENEography]

I like the last one

 

[Kanikula]

thanks for the coms guys! I would bribe him with chocolate but the title would be - grubby toddler portraits! LOL

Maxboom, any hints on how to bring the tones out ???

 

[Alpha]

I would start by toying with the levels, curves and contrast tools in PS.

 

[Artograph]

Looove the last one!!!!

:O)

 

[blatalllic]

How do you get that effect on the last one...Man that looks so nice!!! Love all three by the way!!

 

[Alpha]

Here's an edit:

Here's your histogram for the original shot:

It's dark. More specifically, the histogram has a positive skew, which means all the values are accumulated at the dark/black side.

Here's the histogram of the edit:

That was achieved by pulling the far right slider in the first histogram toward the left, in order to define the range of black and whites across the whole shot as being within that particular range.

There's a problem, though. Try it. Then look at the highlights on the boy's shirt. If you adjust the levels like I said, then they blow out. Once they blow out, that's it (I'm being basic here, this isn't always so much the case if you're using an adjustment layer for the levels). There's a solution. If you know that the highlights will blow when you adjust the levels, then burn the highlights with the Burn tool before you adjust levels. I used several passes with 18% burn in the midtones.

Then there's the background. BO-RING. By boring, I mean that it's flat. But it's not just any old backdrop...it's where your subjects live. So give it some dimensional qualities. Pick up your dodge and burn tools, find areas of obvious shadow and highlight, and go through and lighten and darken them a little. This will increase the dimensional qualities of the room. I also did this on their clothing, as there were so many interesting wrinkles. Light doding and burning can also be really nice when selectively applied to highlights and shadows in hair...it gives it a more full look (I applied a little to the boy's hair). You have to be very careful when dodging or burning faces, though. They can sometimes come out splotchy. I did dodge slightly on the father's face. The areas of highlight were large enough that I could get away with it.

Then I added a 60% Unsharp Mask at a radius of about 5.0 pixels.

Mind you I did all this in about 5 minutes aside from writing this description, so it's by no means a thorough edit. But if I can do that that with your web-sized image, imagine what you could do with the RAW file.

 

[NJMAN]

Thats a great edit and good tutorial on increasing BW tones! Really adds dimension, which is very important in black and white images.

 

[Iron Flatline]

Well done Max... and Kanikula, of course

 

[Kanikula]

Aw thanks for that MB! Iv never worked in BW before so thats really helpful - thankyou

The lighting on #3 one was used with my (new and first ) flashgun.

 

[altyfc]

I like the last one.

That's one tired looking Dad in the second.

 

[Kanikula]

I like the last one.

That's one tired looking Dad in the second.

He does work hard to pay for my hobby!!