How to make photos look professional in PS

[Destin]

Ok, now before you yell at me for the title, there was no other way to word it. I'm stuck in a rut. I've gotten pretty good at photography, in my opinion. (I'll let you be the judge: www.destindanser.com

But, my photos lack that "professional" look that I see other sports photographers getting. I just can't seem to figure out what I need to do in post to get the more professional look out of my photos.

For example:

This is a good photo. He's at peak action, and the lighting is decent. What can I do in CS5 to make it look better?

I know that "more professional" is a very general description. I just don't know how else to describe it.

 

[Dao]

I do not know how to make it look professional in PS.

Personally, I think the subject does not stand out in this photo. Beside the water mark, the person seems blend into the background especially the dark jeans.

And due to how busy the background is, I will say if you can find a way to blur the background a little bit and see if that help bring the subject out.

 

[Buckster]

How are you at making and using masks? If you're good at it, make the background darker and blur it with a lens blur so that your subject stands out. If you're not so good at it, you should focus on learning the technique, as it's real handy for lots of stuff in photo editing.

On the front end though, while shooting, you might want to think about getting less DOF to bring your subject away from the background so you don't have to do much editing later. I notice this was shot at around 85mm @ f/4. Don't know which lens it is, but open it up as wide as you can get it to throw that background OOF. If f/4 is the limit on the lens you're shooting these with, get a faster lens. That may be the biggest difference between your shots and those of the pros.

The next thing to think about is the lighting. Throw that background darker by lighting your subject brighter and compensating with a faster shutter speed, which helps the kind of shooting you're doing anyway - to freeze your subject. If you're already lighting these, use flags or snoots or something to keep them from lighting the background. If you're already doing that, use more light(s) or get the ones you're using already closer to the subject.

 

[Destin]

How are you at making and using masks? If you're good at it, make the background darker and blur it with a lens blur so that your subject stands out. If you're not so good at it, you should focus on learning the technique, as it's real handy for lots of stuff in photo editing.

On the front end though, while shooting, you might want to think about getting less DOF to bring your subject away from the background so you don't have to do much editing later. I notice this was shot at around 85mm @ f/4. Don't know which lens it is, but open it up as wide as you can get it to throw that background OOF. If f/4 is the limit on the lens you're shooting these with, get a faster lens. That may be the biggest difference between your shots and those of the pros.

The next thing to think about is the lighting. Throw that background darker by lighting your subject brighter and compensating with a faster shutter speed, which helps the kind of shooting you're doing anyway - to freeze your subject. If you're already lighting these, use flags or snoots or something to keep them from lighting the background. If you're already doing that, use more light(s) or get the ones you're using already closer to the subject.

Gotcha. I'm definitely no good at masking. But I'm also not sure it's practical to use them on every photo, when I'm trying to sell these photos to the riders so I need shots of as many riders as possible. There are just under 200 photos from on my site from this, and that's alot of masking. So I'll have to work on the way I shoot. But I need to learn masking, regardless.

I was shooting with a 70-200 2.8. the reason I was at f4 was because my main light (and sb-600) was clamped 8 feet up a pole, and I had it set about 1/2 a stop too high. Only way to compensate was to climb up to it, or go to a smaller f-stop. Didn't have time to climb up to it.

But, I do like the idea of lighting the subject more and using a faster shutter speed to darken the background. I even tried it on a few shots, but didn't take the time to get my lights right, so it looked funny. I'll try using more lights next time, and maybe some snoots if I need to. Thanks for the advice!

 

[gsgary]

The football shots have too much DOF due to a short lens, it's very hard to blur the background with 200mm unless you wait untill the action is on top of you, i use a 300F2.8L and that is sometimes too short but 300mm make quite a difference at blurring the background

 

[KmH]

Get closer, physically or with zoom.

Use good compositional technique, in the camera viewfinder preferably, or at least by cropping in post processing.

Look carefully at gsgary's image. The player fills the frame, and his face is at a ROT power point.

 

[Edsport]

Had a quick go at blurring the background. The best way is to do it with the camera if possible...

 

[Derrel]

Edsport's edit is a good example of how to improve such a shot after the fact!

 

[Destin]

I understand what you guys mean about GSGary's photo, but a 300 2.8 isn't in my budget right now. And All my football photos were being shot on a d40 this season, meaning I had 6 megapixels, and couldn't drop much because parents wanted 11x14 prints.

Now I'm about to get a d90 which will allow more cropping and better high iso performace. So Next football season should be way better.

As far as EDsport's edit, I agree that it makes the rider stand out more, but that blur makes my eyes hurt. Doing it with DOF is definitely the way to go.

How does photo look? I still feel it's just lacking a little something to give it a truly professional look:

EDIT: Sorry about the ridiculous watermark. I turned them off in my smugmug that contains this photo, and they won't go away.

 

[gsgary]

You don't need a 300F2.8L, this was taken with a 300F4L which was a fantastic lens i'm sure the Nikon is as good and not too expensive

 

[burgo]

you could use viveza 2

 

[KmH]

I understand what you guys mean about GSGary's photo, but a 300 2.8 isn't in my budget right now......

But, you can still crop.

 

[Destin]

I understand what you guys mean about GSGary's photo, but a 300 2.8 isn't in my budget right now......

But, you can still crop.

Except if you had read through the rest of that, you would have seen that I'm only shooting a 6mp camera, and selling prints. Can't crop much.

And to whoever mentioned the 300 f4, thats a possibility, but most of the stuff I would need 300mm for would be at night, where f4 just won't cut it

 

[Destin]

The football shots have too much DOF due to a short lens, it's very hard to blur the background with 200mm unless you wait untill the action is on top of you, i use a 300F2.8L and that is sometimes too short but 300mm make quite a difference at blurring the background

Also, for american football, having a super short DOF isn't always a good thing. Most good shots have more than one player, weather it be a tackle, or 2 players jumping to fight over a pass. Generally you need at least a 4-5 foot DOF to get all that, if not more. And sometimes you want wayyyy more, such as a shot of the reciever catching the ball with the QB standing 20 yards back down the field watching the play. So for football I honestly don't mind not having short DOF

 

[gsgary]

I much prefer the tight shots and so do the papers and mags
this is F2.8