Couple Shoot, Needing CC

[hjohnson08]

Hey there! I'm new to the forum and in need of some critique. I have the basics down but having trouble with burned out backgrounds. One picture I was able to get the sky really well and then not so great in the next pictures. Thanks in advanced. Ok just edited this post so maybe the images are working now. They worked when I previewed it. *fingers crossed*

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[wyogirl]

Your attachments aren't working.

 

[hjohnson08]

Ok I think I fixed the image problem.

 

[Juga]

The first one has an extremely busy background and you cropped off their feet. The second looks a bit flat because of how close they are to the hedge plus you cropped toes on the girl and at the knee of the guy. I have issues with the same thing and it is all practice. It all takes time and you will get there! :mrgreen:

 

[tirediron]

Blown sky? Add more light! Set up one or two strobes for 1/3 - 1/2 stop over ambient and all will be wonderful. Agree with the comment about the background.

 

[hjohnson08]

Thanks for the advice. I have read about cutting off joints. Obviously need to work a little harder at that lol. Yeah, I'm reading more into fill flash now so hopefully that will help too. Can you give an example of the strobes being 1/2 to 1/3 over the ambient light? Does the ambient refer to the iso setting or another setting??

 

[tirediron]

The ambient light is the light that's already there - so let's say when you meter the bright area of the background with your camera's meter, it meters as f5.6 @1/250 @ ISO 200, you want to bring in your supplemental light so that when you meter the face (you would need a flash meter to actually do this by metering, otherwise, just trial and error works fine) it meters as around f7; you now set your camera to f7 and the people will be properly exposed because of the flash in the foreground, and the background will be knocked down. Of course 1/3 - 1/2 stop was just a guess; sometimes (such as bright overcast) you might need two or more stops to pull some detail out of the sky.

 

[DiskoJoe]

Im wondering what kind of set up you were using here and some of the exif data on the shots. These could have benefited from a much shallower DOF. It would have minimized all the confusion in the background.