Another Picture of my little man.

[Bluffkin]

Thanks for looking! I'm not saying this picture is sheer brilliance, but it's one of my favourites out of a bunch of birthday pics I took casually. Maybe because none of the others are too amazing either. I just wanted to know if you guys appreciated pictures like this or is it something you just shoulder. Obviously it's special to me because it's my son. But there is just something about it that I love. I wish he was sharper, my fault. I might try and revisit it in Lightroom.

 

[sscarmack]

Two things that jump out to me.

1. I can't see his face.

2. Big blurry smudge at the top.

 

[Designer]

Yeah, no.

Sad to say, this is one that I would not bother with.

True, it shows his little physique, but without his face showing, there just isn't a lot here.

 

[Bluffkin]

Hmm, the last thing I would of thought you guys would pick out would be his face not showing. That was the whole point of this picture. Solitary. Just him and his balloon after a long birthday. Guess I didn't capture that at all. The smudge was purposely added in post for effect.

If the subject was all round sharper, would it still be a no from you?

 

[sscarmack]

A good shot "not showing his face", would be him sitting down, that little truck toy or whatever it is in his one hand and the balloon in the other, playing. Frame fully filled.


This feels like he just walked away and you snapped a shot real quick. nothing wrong with that

 

[Bluffkin]

Ok. Thank you

 

[Braineack]

Hmm, the last thing I would of thought you guys would pick out would be his face not showing. That was the whole point of this picture. Solitary.

There's no solidarity in this picture; it's cluttered and hard to achieve a focus/subject. There is definitely something interesting in the lighting, but the image is very poorly composed that it's not highlighting it.

The smudge was purposely added in post for effect.

for what effect? the ruin a picture effect? I would have spent more time at least making it so the light in the windows wasn't an odd purple/gray.

This picture is a big miss for me. Just a snapshot that you happen to enjoy.

 

[Bluffkin]

Ok. Thanks.

 

[Derrel]

I totally,totally "get" this image. My suggestion would be that the soft focus effect is of the "multiply" type, which yields a DARK soft-focus type of effect. A much better type of soft focus effect would come from a "Screen" type of effect, which would lighten the top area, with a brighter, lighter, more hazy "foggy day" type of effect, which is usually better whenever windows or other large, lighted areas are thrown into soft focus/fog/diffusion.

See, the thing is, a BRIGHT windowed area should go soft-focus into LIGHT....like with like...this is DARK-effect over lighted windows which looks totally illogical, and is not the way we have been conditioned to "see" or "imagine" bright areas; the impressionistic rendering is based on a lighted area going into a light, ethereal haze, so what you have in effect looks like a dark, out of focus vignette effect when the proper vignette effect would be a white vignette against a light background area.

With a RAW file, I could make this into a good picture. With the right adjustments, this picture could be made stronger, so as your skills in post processing grow over time, you'll be able to revisit this shot and make it look better than it does in this particular incarnation.

 

[Designer]

Hey! There you go! Send the RAW file to Derrel. I would in a heartbeat if he offered.

 

[vintagesnaps]

I think I see what you're going for; I like the light coming from the window that hits the floor and then you see rays coming from in front of him. I might just enhance and adjust the B&W contrast. I learned doing B&W to have a 'white' white and 'black' black somewhere in the image and I usually adjust for that (learned it related to darkroom work but use the same idea for digital photos). I found that usually if I adjusted to get my 'white' white in a reflection or highlight that it would throw the whole thing off and I'd have to adjust to get some white somewhere else in the image besides where sunlight was hitting.

I don't know if that makes any sense but I'd probably make copies and do some further adjustments and see what you get. I'd think about cropping some, lose the smudge and crop if you want less space, maybe the top and left side to bring the viewer more into the subject.

I think his body stance and the way he's holding his head (and holding the balloon) conveys a mood and in this case the photo from behind is interesting.