island girl! c&c welcomed!

jackieclayton · Jan 3, 2010

ok, so my sister leaves in 2 days and I was able to get another photoshoot of her... this time we did an island theme to capture her experience in Guam. Island weather is tricky, because as we were driving it was overcast and then by the time we got to this location it was full, midday sun.... ugh! but i got a few i thought were good. As always, i'm a noob so I would love some feedback on what you guys think! thanks for looking!

shot with Nikon D700, 24-120mm lens, manual exposure, on camera flash (sb900) used for cave shots, natural lighting used for beach shots. auto ISO and auto WB.

editing in to say that i am in LOVE with the first picture, but cannot get the exposure to look right any way i try to post process it... can you help?

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JMLPictures · Jan 3, 2010

For the exposure on the first picture are you talking about the hot spots?

Josh

JMLPictures · Jan 3, 2010

I tried fixing it but it's completely blown out and there is no information in those whites.

Josh

jackieclayton · Jan 3, 2010

poo... thanks anyway though!

starrshinee · Jan 3, 2010

perhaps you can help me. what is C&C?

jackieclayton · Jan 3, 2010

starrshinee said:
perhaps you can help me. what is C&C?

comments and critique

Shockey · Jan 3, 2010

Crop it just above the elbow on the blown out arm at the bottom and crop a smidge off the left.
Clone out the hotspot on the right side of her face. Reduce contrast a smidge.
If you want to take the time and it really matters to you, you can do a clone at like 15% and clone the dark skin over the blown skin it will at least make it not look so blown, don't overdo it.
Use your dodge tool to highlight the hair on the right side of her head just a little bit, don't over do it.
If you take the time to do all this 1 should look decent.

burnws6 · Jan 3, 2010

Well, bye bye face hot spots, but that arm would take me hours to fix. And I charge for that

As far as the actual exposure....I think its fine. You can't win with the sun being point blank, so that being the case I don't think you could get any better. Shade next time! Or buy a diffuser! Your other pictures are good. I like em.

jackieclayton · Jan 3, 2010

Shockey said:
Crop it just above the elbow on the blown out arm at the bottom and crop a smidge off the left.
Clone out the hotspot on the right side of her face. Reduce contrast a smidge.
If you want to take the time and it really matters to you, you can do a clone at like 15% and clone the dark skin over the blown skin it will at least make it not look so blown, don't overdo it.
Use your dodge tool to highlight the hair on the right side of her head just a little bit, don't over do it.
If you take the time to do all this 1 should look decent.

thanks for the advice, i'll try it out!

jackieclayton · Jan 3, 2010

burnws6 said:
Well, bye bye face hot spots, but that arm would take me hours to fix. And I charge for that

As far as the actual exposure....I think its fine. You can't win with the sun being point blank, so that being the case I don't think you could get any better. Shade next time! Or buy a diffuser! Your other pictures are good. I like em.

thank you!!!

... can you tell me what technique you used to fix her face? i'd like to try...

as for the sun, i completely agree... we were in shade for the other pictures... there was a huge cliff with rock outcrops and caves that gave some nice shade to that intense sun... unfortunatley most of all my beachy water shots were blown... i should have carried a diffuser with me but like i said i was assuming it would be overcast all day when i packed the car... the weather changed so quickly... definitely a lesson learned, especially living in the tropics.

burnws6 · Jan 3, 2010

jackieclayton said:
burnws6 said:

Well, bye bye face hot spots, but that arm would take me hours to fix. And I charge for that

As far as the actual exposure....I think its fine. You can't win with the sun being point blank, so that being the case I don't think you could get any better. Shade next time! Or buy a diffuser! Your other pictures are good. I like em.

Click to expand...

thank you!!! ... can you tell me what technique you used to fix her face? i'd like to try...

as for the sun, i completely agree... we were in shade for the other pictures... there was a huge cliff with rock outcrops and caves that gave some nice shade to that intense sun... unfortunatley most of all my beachy water shots were blown... i should have carried a diffuser with me but like i said i was assuming it would be overcast all day when i packed the car... the weather changed so quickly... definitely a lesson learned, especially living in the tropics.