Mother in Law

blackphoenix · Mar 17, 2019

been taking more pics since i just bought my new external flash today and wanted to see how this turned out. I'm still very new to it and am learning about it. C&C welcomed!

tirediron · Mar 17, 2019

I think with a little more work, this could be a picture which, in years to come will be a treasured memory. First and foremost, you need to start working with a colour-balanced system. This is HORRIBLY yellow. If you do nothing else this week, work on understanding white balance! The main issue i see with the image from an artistic perspective is that she appears a bit annoyed or alarmed; whether she is or not is of little consequence. She looks like she is.

Try this again, but before you shoot, spend some time just talking with her. Explain what you're doing, and get her to relax. I think this would be much stronger if she appeared to be reading the paper and petting her dog. Eye contact is important, but in this case, I think the image will work better with out it. Oh, and watch your cropping... that missing bit of right elbow...

Derrel · Mar 18, 2019

A one-click WB, with the LR eyedropper placed on the lower right of the paper...gets the yellow out...

jcdeboever · Mar 18, 2019

Your flash is daylight balanced and the room is filled with tungsten or incandescent lighting. Usually it's more important to just get the shot and address it in post. I normally start out with a custom setting of 5300 k for my white balance. If I have time to adjust it, I'll attach a gel to get it as close as possible. I have used the orange gel a lot. This past weekend was an event filled with a mixture of light, very dark bowling alley. I ended up using 5300 k and called it a day. Too many different pockets of light. I decided that I would address it in post if needed. I use a.wonderful product called the light scoop litegenius.com, for shots that require the flash to be mounted on camera, it works really good.

blackphoenix · Mar 18, 2019

Thanks for the feedback! it's a lot of technical stuff that i need to familiarize with, definitely.

Designer · Mar 19, 2019

blackphoenix said:
been taking more pics since i just bought my new external flash today and wanted to see how this turned out. I'm still very new to it and am learning about it. C&C welcomed!

As portraits go, this one doesn't make the cut. She could be bedridden, (or not), she is looking off frame, so it might be a candid, being in bed if she's not bedridden is unflattering at best, having the paper there might indicate something, but we can't tell why it's there, your dog could add something, but paper and dog just makes it confusing in my opinion, and as Derrel has shown; the WB can be fixed, but you can also be ready for WB issues before you take the shot.

If she is willing to pose for you, I think you should try again. If she is bedridden and still smokes, perhaps making the cigarette more noticeable in the shot might mean something. Dogs and cigarettes don't really belong in the same room together. Get your MIL to interact with the camera. Watch your framing.