[critique] Pumpkin patch.

[Nightstr]

The family and I decided to swing by the pumpkin patch yesterday evening, I captured a few photos that I was really pleased with. This one of my 5 year old was my favorite.


What do you guys think? how could I improve and or edit to give it more pop?


Thanks for looking.

 

[pixmedic]

its a nice shot, but I felt it needed a little tweaking so I took a quick stab at it in LightRoom.
WB was a little too warm for me, (i went temp -14 and tint -6 from original) and I also dropped the red channel a little. (+30)
this made the picture a little cooler and got rid of the red tint.
(some people prefer warmer photos, some cooler...to a degree, WB can be subjective)
If you like the shot warmer, you can leave the WB as-shot, but still bring the red channel down a bit. I prefer my shots cooler, so
I adjusted as such.
I felt the horizontal shot worked for this, but I went with an 8x10 crop keeping the boy in the left third of the frame.
It also made the subject a little larger in the frame.
I could have gone a little shorter, but on this shot i decided that I liked the stalks in the background to be fully visible.

overall, I think this was nicely done as far as pose and location go.
focus looks pretty good, but might be just a tad soft at 100%.
LR shows this shot at 170mm, ISO100, f/2.8, SS 1/500th.
i think i would have gone f/4 or f/5.6 on this shot for a little more DOF and maybe a slightly sharper focus. at 1/500, you had plenty of room to adjust shutter speed to compensate and still keep the ISO at 100.

 

[Nightstr]

I do like that much better, the crop works so much better also. Thank you for the feed back.

 

[The_Traveler]

Handsome boy and great pose.
I think there are two things going on here.
It is over-exposed so nothing has a rich color, considering the late day sun. Cutting down on brightness and increasing contrast a bit fixes that easily.
The real flaw is that you've chopped off the bottom.
The pumpkins are important here and they're clipped yet there is lots of room for corn and sky.

I think a framing like this would have worked better.

 

[Nightstr]

Thank you! That makes perfect sence! The photo felt a little off and I think it was because the framing was off.

 

[Didereaux]

To me the boy and pumpkins (the subjects) are too low in the frame. There is no need of any sky at all. by lowering the crop assuming you are pretty much full-frame, you will get the subjects up in the middle third of the frame. If you are cropping less than a full-frame then simply lower the crop to achieve that result.

 

[photo1x1.com]

Apart from the said framing, I really like your image.
While the muted tone of your image is nice, for images shot in late afternoon, especially this time of the year, with all the rich colors, I enjoy when colors pop.
I really like small DOF, so you have me on this one.
Here´s my try (Depending on your screen, calibration and color profiles, images look different. So it might look a little too extreme on your end):

What I did (Lightroom6):

• added some overall changes to highlights, shadows, whites, blacks, saturation, etc. - see attached screenshot
  
• added a graduated filter (Exposure -0.4) from bottom to about the waist of your kid
• plus the same graduated filter from the top to the head of the boy.
• added a radial filter just around the boy, inverted it and set the exposure to -0.3. That creates a vignette around everything but the boy and makes the eye concentrate more on your kid.
• added a radial filter just around the face of your kid, and reduced the tint of the face -17 to reduce the reds/magentas in the face
• added an adjustment brush around the face and the shoulder of the boy and set the sharpness for this area only to +35 (that is only visible in the full size in the attachment and reduces the mentioned tad softness when viewed at 100%). I sometimes also do that when the focus is a little off, but I wouldn´t consider it off in your case.

That sounds like an awful lot of work, but it takes about 1-2 min in Lightroom, and when you only do that for the very few best 3-5 images for each shooting, that´s pretty quick.

 

[photo1x1.com]

That´s odd - my images look really oversaturated in Firefox browser, but not in Safari or Google Chrome. I´m on a new computer, maybe I need to tweak some settings. Tips anyone? Monitor is calibrated and I´ve attached a color profile to the image.

EDIT: I did all this, but no change: How To Enable Color Management in Firefox

 

[NancyMoranG]

Looks like he was having fun! Nice shot. But I am of no help with advice

 

[The_Traveler]

That´s odd - my images look really oversaturated in Firefox browser, but not in Safari or Google Chrome. I´m on a new computer, maybe I need to tweak some settings. Tips anyone? Monitor is calibrated and I´ve attached a color profile to the image.

EDIT: I did all this, but no change: How To Enable Color Management in Firefox

Have you restarted both computer and Firefox?
I'm not clear on when computer and browser look at the color profile but, for me, a restart is the fine thing I do.

 

[Derrel]

Q: What do you guys think? how could I improve and or edit to give it more pop?

A more solid, deep, rich black would help, so check the black point in the levels adjustment. Increase the saturation using one of several tools, depending on the software you have available. A bit more contrast would help. I totally "get" the expansive framing, showing the sky, the corn, and some of the pumpkin patch behind him. Post #7 above has a pretty good re-envisioning of your original submission.

 

[Frank F.]

I feel the excessive use of shadow/lighting affects the skin tones in an unpleasent way. Dare for more contrast and stay away from having all details in shadows and highlights.

 

[photo1x1.com]

That´s odd - my images look really oversaturated in Firefox browser, but not in Safari or Google Chrome. I´m on a new computer, maybe I need to tweak some settings. Tips anyone? Monitor is calibrated and I´ve attached a color profile to the image.

EDIT: I did all this, but no change: How To Enable Color Management in Firefox

Have you restarted both computer and Firefox?
I'm not clear on when computer and browser look at the color profile but, for me, a restart is the fine thing I do.

Thanks a lot, but I´m afraid today it is still the same (I shut down the computer every evening). It seems like other people have similar problems without ever solving it. Guess I have to live with it, or change standard browser.

 

[photo1x1.com]

I feel the excessive use of shadow/lighting affects the skin tones in an unpleasent way. Dare for more contrast and stay away from having all details in shadows and highlights.

Very true.
For us, a white piece of paper is percieved as white. However, in images or videos we often try to preserve details and make it offwhite or grey. Why? Sure, a big white snowfield without any detail looks awkward, but some clipping in the highlights (or shadows) here or there does make a big difference. When I edit images, I don´t look too much at the histogram. I roughly get there without - what I´m trying to get is the look I have in my mind, and this is why I love photography. Not because I am able to keep all highlights and shadows, but because I like the look of the images I create.