More newbie practice

[mom2eight]

Practiced some today with the kids. Here are a few shots I wanted to share.

 

[Bitter Jeweler]

The girl is just precious! I like the processing on it, but I do think you should straighten the horizon. It's just off a little. Again, adorable image.

The boy portrait is nice. You might have missed focus on the eyes a little. It's a nice pose, and looks lit very nicely.

I will say I am not a portrait person, so take that grain of salt

 

[littlesandra]

the first one seems a little sharp to me, the second one is great - to bring out the focus on the eyes, sharpen them a little and next time just make sure that's your focal point!

 

[mom2eight]

Thanks! I did use an action on the first one I got from coffeeandtea actions. She loves to get her pictures taken and will pose for hours. I am still struggleing with getting the eyes sharp. I don't know if its me or the lens, but im still working on it.

 

[Josh66]

The first one is great! Second is not bad, but it does look soft...

I am still struggleing with getting the eyes sharp. I don't know if its me or the lens, but im still working on it.

Do you focus and then recompose?

Read this:
Why Focus-Recompose Sucks


Try picking the focus point closest to your intended place of sharpest focus (that sounds weird...) - the eyes - and focus without recomposing.

See if that helps...

 

[manicmike]

I like them. One thing I will say, I like how you cropped the second one. You didn't crop at any of his joints. I see that mistake far too often on here.

 

[Dominantly]

#1 is over processed in my opinion. You have quite a bit of noise which suggest you might have dont quite a bit of sharpening of the photo (maybe missed the focus initially and tried to fix in PP, or is it just the ISO 640?!?). The girls hair also looks a bit gray, I mean it looks like she has gray coming through there at the roots (again PP?!?). I would also have moved her to the viewers left to get the large dark object out of the scene and scene melt away. Good idea with the pose though, lots of potential.

#2 Good composition, a photo someone would probably frame. I was wondering how you set your WB up, I notice you shoot in full manual, and Matrix, so I was just curious. I thought the skin tone looked a bit cool, so I checked to see what it looked like with a tint of warmth and some clarity on the hair and eyes.

 

[mom2eight]

Dom,
I am sure it was the processing on my daughter because her hair is jet black. I wasn't going to take any pictures of her, but she just had to strike a pose for me. lol Needless to say raggedy hair and clothes for playing outside didn't make the best picture. We will try that pose again tomorrow. The edit on my son is great. Thanks for that. I think I had it set to AWB. I have been messing around with the in camera temp to adjust for portraits. Maybe I had it set to low. I was loosing light so I had to crank the ISO up im trying to get used to not using flash. I have a off camera but in the wooded area nothing to bounce off. BTW how did you do the edit?

Josh, Ive tryed everything to get my focus on the eyes. I have tried recomposing, not recomposing, zooming in and focusing then zooming back out. I just cant seem to get it. My hands shake really bad, but even when using my tri-pod my photos come out to soft. Oh well ill keep shooting and one day ill get it right.

 

[Dominantly]

Do you have PS? I can give you the .tif file with the layers I used, if you do.

 

[mom2eight]

I have ps elements!

 

[Dominantly]

Sweet, I'll upload it for you, give me a second.

 

[Dominantly]

Here, open this in PSE and let me know if it opens up with the layers and all.

_MG_8666copy.psd