Enjoying a day at the faire!

[McMommy]

My friend and I took the babies to watch a parade and walk through the booths today in gorgeous Pacific Grove. I took a lot of photos that I absolutely loved, but these two were my favorite.

C&C welcome, just keep in mind I'm a complete noob! Oh by the way, the first picture looks grainy to me, but I'm not sure why. Maybe something I accidentally did in PS? Is there an easier way to fix this other than completely re-editing the photo all over again? (I.E. Cleaning popcorn off her jacket and sugar & crumbs off her face? I love toddlers! lol)

 

[myfotoguy]

Cuties!

The first one the focus looks slightly off (the eyes). Did you use auto-area focus (let the camera choose where to focus), or focus selection were you tell it where to focus. I would use selective and focus on the eyes.

Did you lighten it in PP? If you did, that's probably where the noise came from. Lightening shadows from dark can add noise.

I think a bit of fill-flash would have helped on the first one.

I love the catch light in the eyes on number two.

 

[McMommy]

Thanks! I have been practicing manually focusing my camera, but haven't yet learned (taught myself) how to focus only on one area of the photo. My camera has 11 focus points, and I think there is a way to toggle between the different ones. I'll learn the sweet spot for that soon, I much prefer focusing the lens myself to letting the camera do it for me!

I did lighten the photo in ps, it's the first experience I've had with trying to really bring out such dark eyes. My son's eyes are SO easy to enhance. I'll take some more pictures of the little miss on another, sunny day, or with a flash. All I have is my on-camera flash for now though, so I try to avoid using it as much as possible.