Looking for C&C on pic of child

odiy33 · May 24, 2011

Just a pic taken of my daughter in the backyard, now ofcourse i've heard my parents and my wife tell me how much they love the pic, but would love to get an unbiast opinion. Anything I could have done differently? any suggestions would be appreciated. Thanks in advance

The blue tarp that showed in the pic and the tiki torch to the right need to be edited out, I think they distract a bit.

NCAFLeo88 · May 24, 2011

Yeah, the pic is great but my eye is like instantly drawn to that blue....

bazooka · May 24, 2011

Really?? How can you miss that hat?!? I'd desaturate the hat quite a bit and recrop so her eyes are at least above the midline of the shot. Here, this is what I had in mind....

I bumped up the face shadow curve a bit and lowered the face highlight just a touch. I recropped to use the hat as the border of the corner so it's less distracting. I partially desaturated the hat and the tarp, and additionally lowered the lightness of the tarp. With this crop and edit, I think there is a nice balance between the face and the bright area of the sky. It's nice because the light is coming from that direction so it makes sense compositionally. The spark in the eye really makes this shot what it is in my opinion. It just needed a little tweak.

odiy33 · May 24, 2011

This is exactly why this community is so great. Thank you. Just those little adjustments made the pic 10x better, great job. This was the image straight off the SD card, I did adjust it just as you did as far as cropping it so that she moved over more to the right, but didn't cut out the hat, felt that it might not look good, but after seeing how it looks after you made the adjustments, I see that taking away some of the hat and desaturating the color of the hat, really makes you focus on the eyes more. Thanks again.

gsgary · May 24, 2011

It looks like you have just missed focus

odiy33 · May 24, 2011

I've gotten that comment a few times on some of my photos, and some of them I can easily see how i missed the focus (especially when i was trying to manually focus with my 50 mm 1.8 lens, but I don't see in this specific picture where i missed focus, if you could point it out and explain how i missed it in this pic, it might help me in the future. If i remember correctly I think i just used auto focus on this shot and aimed for her face, lol

gsgary · May 24, 2011

odiy33 said:
I've gotten that comment a few times on some of my photos, and some of them I can easily see how i missed the focus (especially when i was trying to manually focus with my 50 mm 1.8 lens, but I don't see in this specific picture where i missed focus, if you could point it out and explain how i missed it in this pic, it might help me in the future. If i remember correctly I think i just used auto focus on this shot and aimed for her face, lol

Look at the eyes, always focus on the eyes. What F stop did you use ? F5.6 would still blur the background at this distance

odiy33 · May 25, 2011

I believe I had the F stop was 4.2. Thanks for info on focusing,

bazooka · May 25, 2011

It does look like the front eye is slightly soft and the hair is sharp. I think it's usually better to focus on the front eye. At this size, it's not that noticeable though.

Derrel · May 25, 2011

V
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Composition next time?

odiy33 · May 25, 2011

Thanks again everyone, I've gotten plenty of really good feedback to keep in mind, such as learning to focus in to a more specific point instead of just saying to myself, "well i'll just put focus point on her head somewhere and her whole body will be in focus, lol" , Good idea on making this a vertical shot as well, just sitting here covering up all that empty space to the left and envisioning it as a vertical shot does look better.

Christie Photo · May 25, 2011

Derrel said:
V
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C
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Composition next time?

Oh, Derrel, my friend... you never disappoint.

-Pete

The_Traveler · May 25, 2011

IMO, children never look their best when the light is really harsh.
Part of their attractiveness is the unworn soft luster of their skin and. in this shot her right cheek is burnt out and she has dark shadows n her left cheek.
Too dramatic lighting, imo, for the best shot of a child.

(if you want to see what I mean by less dramatic lighting, there are some child pix in this thread.)

odiy33 · May 26, 2011

I agree, but also think pics with this kind of lighting can look pretty good too, It's neat when you catch the sun light hitting there eyes just enough where it shrinks there pupil, but not too much light to the point it makes the child scrunch there face up and squint.