Fall Senior Session

[twocolor]

This was quite the day! Lightning, thunder, rain! Dad held an umbrella over his senior, mom held an umbrella over me, and we pushed through. The bonus of a rain storm, is the rich colors that it turns everything - although as I'm looking at them now, they seem flat and muted. I do get so frustrated with uploading to flickr. It was beautiful!
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3.

4.

5.

 

[RauschPhotography]

What's next to the left of the girl in #1? It's very distracting from the model. The last shot is my favorite.. Well done.

 

[twocolor]

What's next to the left of the girl in #1? It's very distracting from the model. The last shot is my favorite.. Well done.

She's sitting on an old tractor. She's sitting on the wheel, and the thing you see is the seat of the tractor. We didn't put her on the seat because the rain was puddling there and we didn't want to soak her butt .

I left it in because it is her grandmother's farm and her great great grandfather's tractor.

 

[Tbini87]

great shots! I like them a lot. Good mix of different poses and backgrounds. Not a big fan of the tilted camera shot, but that's just personal preference.

 

[twocolor]

great shots! I like them a lot. Good mix of different poses and backgrounds. Not a big fan of the tilted camera shot, but that's just personal preference.

Thanks! Tilted shots are defineatly a take it or leave it kinda thing. I've found the moms don't love them, but the seniors generally do. I like them, BUT I don't have any tilted shots hanging in my house so . . . .

 

[GeneralBenson]

Overall, pretty nice shots. My two critiques would be that in 4 all but the close up, there are lots of grass and/or branches encroaching on her personal space. and that is something that bugs me, and makes them seem crowded to me. The other thing, is that you need to control you magenta/red/oranges from getting oversaturated and clipping. The scarf and the stripes on her sweater are both massively oversaturated, so that they not only are losing detail, but are also competing too strongly for attention in otherwise not too saturated images.

 

[Studio7Four]

I can get on board with the sentimental attachment to the tractor in #1, but I would suggest exploring different angles for that shot. The seat impinging on the side of the shot is distracting. I would suggest either get the seat entirely out of the frame (she's still sitting on the wheel) or get a bit more of the tractor in the shot.

I think #2 is a great shot...great pose, great rapore with the camera. I do agree that the magenta is a little over saturated (in #3 also). I would recommend doing a slight selective desaturation on those areas - I wouldn't alter her face, as I love her eyes in this shot.

I personally think that the tilt in #3 is a little extreme. I understand that tilt is a personal taste issue (like selective coloring) and is currently trendy, so I'm not saying don't do it. I just think the angle is a little too great (and since all of the major line in the image - tree, fence, barn, posture - are very horizontal or vertical, the tilt just seems forced here).

In #4, I think there is too much background and not enough subject (for a senior picture anyway). If you do want to go with a zoomed out view, I think landscape would have worked better here. That would have allowed you to cut out the flat grey sky and the power lines.

Shot #5 is all around solid. She doesn't seem as enthused as in the earlier shots - I don't know if that was at the end of the shoot and her energy was waning or if you directed her to reign it in. Not really a negative (I like to see the subject not having the exact same expression for every image), it just stands out from the rest of the shots.

 

[Studio7Four]

(Oops, double post. Sorry!)

 

[Derrel]

I do not care for the oversaturated, brilliant colors with fluorescent dye pigments pitted against the natural earth tones...it looks very jarring and trendy, in a bad way. Same with the orange scarf and the traditional overcoat...bad match from my perspective.

There's more good here than bad. Everybody has his/her opinions. Mine are mine. I do not like the figure/background attachment with the small tree sprouting out of her shoulder in the "tractor" shot. (it looks more like an old grader or buck rake than a tractor...). I am intimately familiar with those old metal seats--they are comfortable and iconic, and they really,rrrrrreally say "old-timey" to people who have seen them and been around them. The barn and the fence look very old. The OOF grass in foreground is a bit distracting, and I dislike the amount of depth of field behind her...the tree and its small branches are rendered in too good a focus. I wish this had been shot with a 180mm lens or 200mm at around f/4 instead.

Shot #2 is a nice over the shoulder look. She looks very pretty in that shot. I'd be tempted to clone out the dark branches at 10 and 2 o'clock, to clean up the nicely OOF backdrop. Nice to see a bustline, but the grass seed head overlapping the bust is distracting. Goood pose for a senior girl. Her under-eye lines are a bit prominent, might want to touch those up a bit.

Shot #3-You have a great situation there, since it is actually raining pretty good. I wish the tilt were not there, I dislike tilt immensely. I think if you had kept the camera straight up and down it would have improved the shot by getting in more of the dark background and the atmospheric haze/fog/mist, and the sapling tree on the left would have echoed the corner fence post with two uprights, with her in the middle. Would have been nice to show that rain streaking down with a slower shutter speed, but then, there's those doggone power lines in the background....#3 has a beautiful full smile, a lovely angle to her face, and excellent rapport with the camera. I just hate the tilt...showing rain like that can be very hit and miss...needs just the right shutter speed for the drop size and frequency,and it might only last for 1-2 minutes, then stop, start,etc.

#4 you have backed up,and now those doggone power lines intrude....I'd loved to have seen that one shot with a 300mm f/4 lens, with JUST the top of the barn and a little bit of the hills as the top of the frame...lens focal length looks 85mm-ish or so, and the angle of acceptance behind her is too wide for my taste--she's too small, and there's too much background for my taste. I would have loved to have seen #4 done differently, mainly because the power lines kill it for me. The top of the hill behind shows the fog/mist/cloudy skies...this is an environmental shot, but I don't like what the lens reveals about the environment...I like the grasses, love the barn, sapling, but hate the wires...

#5: I like the way you use the technique of skimming, which is aiming the lens down the side of a wall or building, to use the wall as OOF foreground that leads the eye right to the subject; with that OOF skimmed wall, the orange scarf is totally redundant,and just gaudy...

Man, that might sound brutal...I hope not...just one guy's opinions.

 

[kylehess10]

#2 is my favorite! Her eyes really stand out

 

[twocolor]

I can get on board with the sentimental attachment to the tractor in #1, but I would suggest exploring different angles for that shot. The seat impinging on the side of the shot is distracting. I would suggest either get the seat entirely out of the frame (she's still sitting on the wheel) or get a bit more of the tractor in the shot.

I think #2 is a great shot...great pose, great rapore with the camera. I do agree that the magenta is a little over saturated (in #3 also). I would recommend doing a slight selective desaturation on those areas - I wouldn't alter her face, as I love her eyes in this shot.

I personally think that the tilt in #3 is a little extreme. I understand that tilt is a personal taste issue (like selective coloring) and is currently trendy, so I'm not saying don't do it. I just think the angle is a little too great (and since all of the major line in the image - tree, fence, barn, posture - are very horizontal or vertical, the tilt just seems forced here).

In #4, I think there is too much background and not enough subject (for a senior picture anyway). If you do want to go with a zoomed out view, I think landscape would have worked better here. That would have allowed you to cut out the flat grey sky and the power lines.

Shot #5 is all around solid. She doesn't seem as enthused as in the earlier shots - I don't know if that was at the end of the shoot and her energy was waning or if you directed her to reign it in. Not really a negative (I like to see the subject not having the exact same expression for every image), it just stands out from the rest of the shots.

Thanks for the critique. I do have some other angles with that tractor:

Here's another one I like with the tractor.

I also have a horizontal layout of #4

I like the vertical because it showed how low the clouds were on the mountain. Plus her smile seemed a little more natural in the vertical one!

And yes, by the time we shot #5, we were cold and tired, I thought it was a nice expression despite what conditions we were working with!

 

[twocolor]

I do not care for the oversaturated, brilliant colors with fluorescent dye pigments pitted against the natural earth tones...it looks very jarring and trendy, in a bad way. Same with the orange scarf and the traditional overcoat...bad match from my perspective.

There's more good here than bad. Everybody has his/her opinions. Mine are mine. I do not like the figure/background attachment with the small tree sprouting out of her shoulder in the "tractor" shot. (it looks more like an old grader or buck rake than a tractor...). I am intimately familiar with those old metal seats--they are comfortable and iconic, and they really,rrrrrreally say "old-timey" to people who have seen them and been around them. The barn and the fence look very old. The OOF grass in foreground is a bit distracting, and I dislike the amount of depth of field behind her...the tree and its small branches are rendered in too good a focus. I wish this had been shot with a 180mm lens or 200mm at around f/4 instead.

Shot #2 is a nice over the shoulder look. She looks very pretty in that shot. I'd be tempted to clone out the dark branches at 10 and 2 o'clock, to clean up the nicely OOF backdrop. Nice to see a bustline, but the grass seed head overlapping the bust is distracting. Goood pose for a senior girl. Her under-eye lines are a bit prominent, might want to touch those up a bit.

Shot #3-You have a great situation there, since it is actually raining pretty good. I wish the tilt were not there, I dislike tilt immensely. I think if you had kept the camera straight up and down it would have improved the shot by getting in more of the dark background and the atmospheric haze/fog/mist, and the sapling tree on the left would have echoed the corner fence post with two uprights, with her in the middle. Would have been nice to show that rain streaking down with a slower shutter speed, but then, there's those doggone power lines in the background....#3 has a beautiful full smile, a lovely angle to her face, and excellent rapport with the camera. I just hate the tilt...showing rain like that can be very hit and miss...needs just the right shutter speed for the drop size and frequency,and it might only last for 1-2 minutes, then stop, start,etc.

#4 you have backed up,and now those doggone power lines intrude....I'd loved to have seen that one shot with a 300mm f/4 lens, with JUST the top of the barn and a little bit of the hills as the top of the frame...lens focal length looks 85mm-ish or so, and the angle of acceptance behind her is too wide for my taste--she's too small, and there's too much background for my taste. I would have loved to have seen #4 done differently, mainly because the power lines kill it for me. The top of the hill behind shows the fog/mist/cloudy skies...this is an environmental shot, but I don't like what the lens reveals about the environment...I like the grasses, love the barn, sapling, but hate the wires...

#5: I like the way you use the technique of skimming, which is aiming the lens down the side of a wall or building, to use the wall as OOF foreground that leads the eye right to the subject; with that OOF skimmed wall, the orange scarf is totally redundant,and just gaudy...

Man, that might sound brutal...I hope not...just one guy's opinions.

Thanks Derrel for your opinion! I shot these with my 50 prime. Most of them shot around 2.8. More for lighting than for DOF though, it was getting fairly dark by the time we finished up!

The clothing choice wasn't mine, and I actually didn't play with the saturation on her clothing at all. Sometimes a little on the leaves and trees, but not on her clothing. I didn't want the clothes to be the overpowering feature. Maybe I'll go in and desaturate a little bit!