First decent shot with my new-to-me D7000

seedubxj · Oct 22, 2013

Jules crumb face black and white | Flickr - Photo Sharing!

She had just finished a birthday cupcake. C&C welcome. I'm a total beginner and I have a thick skin. So please, opinions!

dsiglin · Oct 22, 2013

I think this works really well in B&W! Some thoughts: did you up the "clarity", her skin looks like it has had that done. Clarity is great for landscapes but with people you often have to go back with a touch-up brush and smooth out the skin again otherwise it looks to "hard". Could be that it is slightly underexposed, imo. Overall the photo is very dark and her eyes become black pits. Here's edit I did where I cropped the photo just slightly, lightened it up and adjusted the gamma a bit, and dodged (lightened) her eyes a tad after the fact. I also darkened a tad the area around her. Overall though this is a nice, emotive photo.

ps - I'd embed your photo in the first post, most people won't bother to click the link.

480sparky · Oct 22, 2013

I agree about the dark eyes. Looks more sinister than innocent.

seedubxj · Oct 22, 2013

Thanks for the comments! Question, how would I go about avoiding the black-pool like eyes in the future?

dsiglin · Oct 23, 2013

Well you can use a diffused flash maybe bounced off the ceiling, or you can use the available light to fill them in. In post processing you can lighten them in Lightroom either by using an adjustment brush or by selectively lightening their color channel.