Knight in Shining Armor . . . Family Session

[twocolor]

I love to get a family that does something different! This family is very into the whole medieval stuff. The daughter's wedding was even medieval themed. The groom wore full armor at the reception!

1.

2

3.

4.

5.

6.

 

[D-B-J]

In my opinion, the photo's are all flat. Boring, and not composed too well. Research the rule of thirds and the "golden hour."

Regards,
Jake

 

[Bynx]

While they dont look 'professionally' done. I think they are perfect for the occasion. If they had cameras back then, family shots would look exactly like this. You might try another set with a sepia for the olden age look. Nice job.

 

[Tashyd]

I really like number 6!

 

[berryblue]

I really like the last one. It has a magical glowing touch to it! The composition of the background goes well with the way the girl is posed.

 

[Bitter Jeweler]

I think the composition is fine for these. Every image does not have to be off center. I would actually center the last one better. It's good to see someone take portraits and use portrait orientation when appropriate.

 

[twocolor]

In my opinion, the photo's are all flat. Boring, and not composed too well. Research the rule of thirds and the "golden hour."

Regards,
Jake

:thumbdown:
I'm sorry you feel that way.

 

[twocolor]

While they dont look 'professionally' done. I think they are perfect for the occasion. If they had cameras back then, family shots would look exactly like this. You might try another set with a sepia for the olden age look. Nice job.

Thank you! I'll play with one in sepia. Maybe #6 is stong enough to carry out a sepia???

 

[Bitter Jeweler]

Bah! Don't be sorry! You know, grain of salt.The lighting in #3 is very nice to me. The faces have nice dimension.#2 troubles me the most. This pose I think would have worked much better if you shot more from your left, to get more side view, and in landscape aspect. #6 feels like a classic painting to hang over a fireplace, in the castle. What a fun shoot to do. I like taking pictures of people in costume. Ren faires, civil war reenactments, etc.

 

[Bitter Jeweler]

Thank you! I'll play with one in sepia. Maybe #6 is stong enough to carry out a sepia???

Nooooo! I am wondering if you could push the blacks a bit, and work on selectively upping the saturation, to get a nice rich jewel tone feel to it.But that's me.

 

[Derrel]

1> Horizontal. Why? It makes absolutely zero sense to frame them this way.

3>The group's eye lines all point to different locations. My money is on "somebody trying to help" with the baby's expression, and distracting the infant, who appears to be amused by one of the other family members standing behind you to your left. The bald, white sky in the upper left is very distracting: a solid, entirely landscape background would have made this photo nicer, I think.

4> Seems kind of far-away-looking, and the camera height seems too high. I do not like the horizon line running through the heads of the back people. The far-away-looking thing looks to me to be from a relatively short focal length that is giving a LOT of depth of field, all the way back to the modern, wire fence line in the back right. I'd loved to have seen this shot with a 180mm or 300mm from farther back, with the backdrop "suppressed" more. JUst seems framed awfully loosely, and with more depth of field than optimal to put the emphasis on the people.

5> The baby, with an entirely landscape backdrop...I wish shot #4 above had been handled the same way, without the bald white sky. In this photo, of the baby, there are only two main planes: near, and far. With #4 there is near, far, and Infinity, three planes of distance. Pretty serviceable shot. BIG baby, framed just right.

6> Suitably demure, the young maiden is posed well, and her expression is excellent. Solid shot. Posed better than her brother in #2, whose sword is sort of sticking to the side of his head, and who is "lost" by being seated right on his butt in the grass, even though there's a suitable log nearby, thus losing a lot of the charm of his costuming.

As a set, 1,2,4,5 have really,really,really outrageously saturated greens, that probably will print out of gamut. Shot #3 has rich,verdant, and yet believable green grass colors. It would be nice if the greens matched, since they are such a huge part of most of these shots. Skin tone rendering is excellent in ALL shots.

 

[Bynx]

#6 is such a great shot. The only thing that bothers me is the point in the dress by her knee. Id like to see a smooth line there. But otherwise, great shot, pose, composition, background, everything. There is so much that can be done with this and they all look great to me. Here are a couple of ideas.

 

[GeneralBenson]

1 - I actually like the horizontal framing, but I think the crop is too tight, especially on the top of his head. I agree with Derrel that the greens are pretty much all way out of whack. My guess is that you significantly warmed up these photos, and that pushed the greens to far towards yellow/orange. I would go in and selectively push the green back towards blue a good bit, and return them to a normal shade of green, instead of nuclear yellow/green. They could also stand to be a fair bit darker.

2 - Same for the greens. Just feels somewhat random for me. And he's totally center-punched.

3 - Looks nice. Lighting is nice. Same again for the greens, same again for the center-punch. I with the skyline wasn't right above his head, should have allowed for more space. Basically feels like a tight crop to me, even though it's not the edge of the frame. Wish the baby was looking, but we all know how that goes.

4 - Same for the greens, same for the positioning. the big problem here is that the horizon line is going straight through 3 people heads. That's super distracting to me. Prominent lines like that need to be treated just like cropping lines, and positions accordingly, i.e., not through peoples' heads.

5 - Greens. Crop. Horizon line, this time coming right out of her off camera eyeline. Makes it very hard to keep your eyes in the frame, instead of following her gaze and the leading line right out of the frame. Also, not a fan of the out of focus grass in the foreground.

6 - I think this one is the best of the bunch. Lovely dress and lovely girls. The light is pretty good. But most of the same problems persist. The green are neon, the crop is essentially centered, and the horizon line is decapitating her.

So, it seems like pretty much the majority of them have the same problems. When you warm up photos, or pull the shadows way out, beware of what it does to other colors, especially greens. These looks like they were taken on a relatively over cast day, and there's no contrast, to make the scen interesting. Everything is very flat looking. If it wasn't overcast, then you crunched the contrast a lot in post. As much as DBJ wasn't too tactful, I think he's pretty dead on. These image are very flat, and the subjects are very centered.

But I think my biggest issue for this set, is that the location just does nothing for me. The more I look at them, the more I just feel nothing from the location. It seems random to me, and sort of like, "Why are all these medieval clad people just sitting in the middle of a field?". There's no sense of context or place, there's way too much negative space I think. The whole scene is just kind of 'blah' to me. I would have loved to see something that caters a little more to the whole medieval theme of everything. They're all so decked out in period clothing, then just stuck in the middle of a field. There's a really disproportionate balance between what they are bring to the images and what the scene is bringing to the images. They look like a fun bunch, and I think you could have had so much more fun with this shoot than just 'go sit in the grass'.