Not Real Happy With This, What Do You See?

[fjrabon]

IMG_8589 by franklinrabon, on Flickr

But to not hinder C&C, I'll keep my thoughts as to what is wrong to myself. The team really liked it though.

Thoughts?

 

[Derrel]

Is it the girl who's blinking, 3rd from right that's bugging you??? Or their semi-transparent pants?? The girl with the buckskin-colored shoes??? Or the size falloff on the figures of the ladies standing on the right hand side of the photo??? I dunno...

 

[JFC]

i see bunch of girls that i don' t want to mess with. 1st left ( viewer eyes ) is cute, 5th from right is gorgeus. lols
but the picture more to the right more the light fade away.

 

[swiftparkour94]

I agree, light fades to the right. Scooting a bit more that direction may have evened it out. I don't use flash so who knows, I may be wrong very beautiful girls though

 

[michael9000000]

http://www.flickr.com/photos/franklinrabon/8089041851/
IMG_8589 by franklinrabon, on Flickr

But to not hinder C&C, I'll keep my thoughts as to what is wrong to myself. The team really liked it though.

Thoughts?

In my humble opinion, the noticeably underexposed background is the major fault.

 

[Tony S]

I have a hard time with my eyes trying to really see the image. The way they are lined up wants to pull my eyes out of the image instead of leading them in to the image. I start with the one in the center and then am torn on which way to go. the two on the far right have been left in the dark and there are a few with shadows falling on half their faces from the player in front of them. Lastly, the spacing on the girls on the left is looser compared to how close the ones on the right are spaced.

At first glance it's a nice image, but to critique it you start to see the little things.

did you use three lights...... one left, one center and one right?? If so raising them higher might have eliminated the shadows that fell on the faces. but I'm only stabbing a guess here on what is really going on.

 

[Edsport]

I see they all have clean clothes but one has dirty knees...

 

[Mach0]

I see they all have clean clothes but one has dirty knees...

shes the catcher lol.

 

[digital flower]

They don't seem happy

 

[amolitor]

This is a fine setup, but you failed to balance flash with daylight in a particularly convincing way. The girls on the right of the frame got shortchanged, too.

 

[MLeeK]

I see posing problems, a distracting background that looks like it is purposefully underexposed in edit; lighting problems-especially on the left, rear; shadows from light placement on heads and faces; distortion making the hips and feet larger than the heads.
I try to shoot this shot from well above with the subjects looking up at me with my lights above them as well. This puts the heads as the most important thing in the image, the shadows fall to the floor/ground instead of on each other and it eliminates background issues. I generally do the shot on our gym mats so that the floor is solid dark blue of the team's colors or on the gym floor. For football the field and for baseball the outfield works.

 

[dalex100]

The background is underexposed, right? And the right side of the image needs a little more light.

 

[2WheelPhoto]

If they agree to a reshoot can i join you!?

I'll even bring some lights =)

 

[fjrabon]

The shadow and light drop off were the problems that bothered me the most.

I was shooting in fairly harsh late afternoon light, and the impact strobes I had probably weren't enough to do the job of killing the shadows. Ideally I would have moved them to where the sun wasn't coming at them sideways (the vast majority of the shadows are from the sun, not the lights) but this would involve a much worse background (think dump trucks or outfield advertisements). Also I had about 5 minutes to set this entire photo up, since it was the last shot of the session (I took 20 individual shots before this, 7 other team photos, and 43 combinations of friends on the team, these girls seemingly wanted every single two person combination on the team in a shot because "we're all besties!"). So anyway, in trying my dangdest to kill the shadows from the sun, I gave the two girls who also had much darker complexion on the photographer's back right less light, which is my biggest gripe. Also, essentially by the time that I'd get one side posed correctly and went to the other side, the first side would then have shifted and no longer be posed right. And I had like 5 minutes to do that, lol. Drove me crazy.

The background was probably a bit overdone, and I'd have ideally made it a bit brighter, but I still haven't fully edited this either, so I can still play with that some (as well as dodge the girls on the right), but the point of the shot is an intimidating, contrasty shot (don't worry, they have several much more traditional team shots). Hence the 'from below' angle and the mean mug faces. Sort of trying to convey a 'hey, we're undefeated, and we're bigger and badder than you' type feel.

I'm guessing our editing team probably worked their usual magic and that's why the team liked it so much.

I actually marked this shot to not be sent to the team, but somehow it got sent anyway, and then the coach specifically sent me a text saying how much the team liked it and how it was going to go on the back of the visitors' dugout, huge and blown up, lol.

It'll be interesting to see what our image editors did to it and how mortified I am when I see this thing in gigantic form on the back of a softball dugout.

 

[Designer]

Aside from the lighting issues already mentioned, and the camera position already mentioned, you have placed the subjects in an inverted "V", so the ones on the ends will be the farthest from the camera.

Why?