Engagement photos CC please

[katastrophekaty]

I did these last year in July. I just edited them today. I boosted the contrast to 20 and sharpened to 60. CC much appreciated

 

[tirediron]

A ten month turn-around on an engagement shoot?



C&C per req:

1. Fill light needed; the strong background has caused extreme under-exposure around his face & eyes. Additionally, you've blocked his shoulder with the post and cropped away part of his back/hat. Just a bit of supplemental light from a reflector or speedlight and a slight position change so that we could see a bit of face was all that was needed here.

2. Lighting is the main issue here; you've placed the subject in (I assume) fairly deep shade and adjusted the exposure to render the subjects correctly. This has resulted in a blown background and since the human eye is naturally attraacted to bright over dark, the viewer is pulled right 'past' the couple into the empty background. A couple of speedlights would have save this shot.

3. Lighting, as per #2; when shooting subjects with large hats, always have a reflector to get a little light under the brim and onto their face. Watch your crops; it's fine to crop limbs in you have to, but always do it broadly and never at/near a joint and NEVER along lateral axis.

4. Nice pose, nice scene, lighting as per above.

Overall it's not a bad set, but your lighting (or rather lack thereof) has really let you down. You don't always need supplemental light, but if you always have it, then you're ready when you do. A single speedlight would have taken all of these from 'okay' to 'wow'.

Just my $00.02 worth - your mileage may vary.

~John

 

[katastrophekaty]

A ten month turn-around on an engagement shoot?



C&C per req:

1. Fill light needed; the strong background has caused extreme under-exposure around his face & eyes. Additionally, you've blocked his shoulder with the post and cropped away part of his back/hat. Just a bit of supplemental light from a reflector or speedlight and a slight position change so that we could see a bit of face was all that was needed here.

2. Lighting is the main issue here; you've placed the subject in (I assume) fairly deep shade and adjusted the exposure to render the subjects correctly. This has resulted in a blown background and since the human eye is naturally attraacted to bright over dark, the viewer is pulled right 'past' the couple into the empty background. A couple of speedlights would have save this shot.

3. Lighting, as per #2; when shooting subjects with large hats, always have a reflector to get a little light under the brim and onto their face. Watch your crops; it's fine to crop limbs in you have to, but always do it broadly and never at/near a joint and NEVER along lateral axis.

4. Nice pose, nice scene, lighting as per above.

Overall it's not a bad set, but your lighting (or rather lack thereof) has really let you down. You don't always need supplemental light, but if you always have it, then you're ready when you do. A single speedlight would have taken all of these from 'okay' to 'wow'.

Just my $00.02 worth - your mileage may vary.

~John

Lol, they're my brother and sister-in-law. I edited them as soon as I got home from the shoot, but I decided to take the original and try again! The tree they were under actually didn't have very many leaves on it so it wasn't completely shaded, but it was a bit overcast, they were a little shady. My brother is also tanned from working in the sun, but the overcast may have been due to him looking even darker. I feel like I over-sharpened all of them as well so they don't look as great as I think they could if I had professional editing skills. I resized all to 800x600 and vice versa, and then sharpened them to 60 (twice on the daddy/baby pic) so I feel like I over did it with the sharpening. I didn't crop any of them, I just zoomed in on the camera. I need to learn to shoot at a nice close (but not too close) distance and then do any cropping needed because I seem to zoom in too far on most close-ups. I love close up shots, they're my guilty pleasure. I love eyes, so I try to catch them.

These are the originals of these pics



These are a couple of other similar shots of a couple of them

 

[DiskoJoe]

There are some issues here, Some technical and some asthetic. TI touched on your lighting issues. Do you have a flash? If not, then get one. Very essential for portraits when lighting is not ideal. Also you stated that the sky was overcast. Timing is very key. Learn to wait until the timing is right. You only do things at on other peoples schedules when there is compensation involved. When doing folks favors have them work with you more. The results will be worth the effort.

AS for the scene and the posing, you can really tell the ameteur status here. Their clothing choices are pretty horrid. He's wearing green and she's in red, christmas nightmare in July. Of course a quick b/w render would fix that. BUt what bothered me more than anything else is your brothers stonefaced look. Its emotionless, especially so when compared to his wifes great smile. As a photographer it is your job and obligation to figure out how to make him crack a smile and feel relaxed in front of a camera.

 

[katastrophekaty]

There are some issues here, Some technical and some asthetic. TI touched on your lighting issues. Do you have a flash? If not, then get one. Very essential for portraits when lighting is not ideal. Also you stated that the sky was overcast. Timing is very key. Learn to wait until the timing is right. You only do things at on other peoples schedules when there is compensation involved. When doing folks favors have them work with you more. The results will be worth the effort.

AS for the scene and the posing, you can really tell the ameteur status here. Their clothing choices are pretty horrid. He's wearing green and she's in red, christmas nightmare in July. Of course a quick b/w render would fix that. BUt what bothered me more than anything else is your brothers stonefaced look. Its emotionless, especially so when compared to his wifes great smile. As a photographer it is your job and obligation to figure out how to make him crack a smile and feel relaxed in front of a camera.

I have a flash built into the camera, but I was a little further back because I didn't want my shadow in the frame. With it being overcast, I'm not sure if that would have been much of an issue, but it's a defensive thing. I hate it when shadows that don't belong to the subject are in a picture. I didn't really have time to wait for the "right time" because we had a three-month-old with us, and as for my brother's expression, he's a grown adult and if he doesn't feel like smiling, I can't force him. I did tell him that they would look better if he smiled, but again; he's an adult and does what he wants. He is somewhat smiling, but he's not much of a smiler anyways. Great person, horrible smiler.