Ok my turn for critique on people photo's

rokvi · Jul 7, 2012

I did a shoot for free for a friend,asked nothing in return but got a bottle of bourbon for my troubles. (which was no trouble as they were my guinea pigs).

So let me know what I did wrong and where I could do better etc.

#1

#2

#3

#4

Also thanks to those that helped me earlier, to get them up here.

412 Burgh · Jul 7, 2012

Viewing on my iPhone and I must say most people are going to nail you on the awkward limb cutting off. In the first one the girl on the right has her hands cut off.

#3 her hand holdin the flip flops are cut off which isn't too pleasin but it can be overlooked.

#4 elbow is cut off 1/4 of the girl on the left is cut off.

Just helpful tips from a rookie most people don't like limbs cut off. Not every photo has to be guidelined but I think these detract from your photos.

ZapoTeX · Jul 7, 2012

Hi! From my laptop screen, 3 and 4 are definitely not cut off! Love the composition, especially in number 3.

Number 1 I agree, cutting the hand and part of the baby's shoes was not the framing I would have aimed for.

Number 2 looks like it has been aggressively de-noised, which is impossible at ISO 200 (unless you pushed +3 EVs during development), maybe you did heavy skin smoothing?

Lovely shots, especially number 3!

The_Traveler · Jul 7, 2012

these all seem to be odd sizes for no obvious reason.
that attracts the viewer to the shape (and away from the image) and makes it more expensive to mat, print and frame.

In #1 and #3 the subjects are not placed in the frame well.

rokvi · Jul 7, 2012

ZapoTeX said:
Hi! From my laptop screen, 3 and 4 are definitely not cut off! Love the composition, especially in number 3.

Number 1 I agree, cutting the hand and part of the baby's shoes was not the framing I would have aimed for.

Number 2 looks like it has been aggressively de-noised, which is impossible at ISO 200 (unless you pushed +3 EVs during development), maybe you did heavy skin smoothing?

Lovely shots, especially number 3!

#1, Yea I know Im spewing about that, no excuses but that was probably the only time the little boy was looking anywhere in the vicinity of the camera lol.

#2 It has been De-noised She had a few, actually a lot of pimples on her forehead. Im wondering if there is a better way in lightroom to fix that, or do I need PS?

rokvi · Jul 7, 2012

The_Traveler said:
these all seem to be odd sizes for no obvious reason.
that attracts the viewer to the shape (and away from the image) and makes it more expensive to mat, print and frame.

In #1 and #3 the subjects are not placed the the frame well.

Odd sizes, point taken. I will take remember that.

Where would you place a power point to better frame?

rokvi · Jul 7, 2012

412 Burgh said:
Viewing on my iPhone and I must say most people are going to nail you on the awkward limb cutting off. In the first one the girl on the right has her hands cut off.

#3 her hand holdin the flip flops are cut off which isn't too pleasin but it can be overlooked.

#4 elbow is cut off 1/4 of the girl on the left is cut off.

Just helpful tips from a rookie most people don't like limbs cut off. Not every photo has to be guidelined but I think these detract from your photos.

Thanks for looking, it must not have come out right on your phone. #1 the hands and feet are cut. however the rest aren't.

rokvi · Jul 7, 2012

rokvi said:
The_Traveler said:

these all seem to be odd sizes for no obvious reason.
that attracts the viewer to the shape (and away from the image) and makes it more expensive to mat, print and frame.

In #1 and #3 the subjects are not placed the the frame well.

Click to expand...

Odd sizes, point taken. I will take remember that.

Where would you place a power point to better frame?

Here is #1 with a bit of room to play with the crop.

ZapoTeX · Jul 8, 2012

or do I need PS?

Try Paint.NET, a free program. I love it, it's kind of poor man's PS (which is why I use it - I'd rather spend money on LR, which I use for ALL photos, than on PS, which I would only use on a small subset of them). Lightroom does not have much to edit photos "locally". All you do (almost all you do) applies to the entire frame.

If you get familiar with clone brush and selective blurring on Paint.NET, you'll be able to remove pimples without making the entire image look like it's made of porcelain.

IMHO, though, just leave the pimples. Imperfections are what makes us who we are. Unless you want to sell that photo, just leave it as is. That girl is very beautiful in picture 1, where I did not see any strong smoothing.

Ciao!

Jaemie · Jul 8, 2012

ZapoTeX said:
Try Paint.NET, a free program. I love it, it's kind of poor man's PS (which is why I use it - I'd rather spend money on LR, which I use for ALL photos, than on PS, which I would only use on a small subset of them).

^^ Yes. I like Paint.NET quite a bit, and not just because it's free. I have PS CS6 and LR4. For many tasks, it's easier than PS.

ZapoTeX · Jul 8, 2012

I like Paint.NET quite a bit, and not just because it's free.

That is actually surprising to me! To be honest, if I had PS I would not use Paint.NET

Two reasons: 1) Resizing/sharpening quality 2) JPEG compression.
In these two aspects, Adobe products destroy the competition. I'm convinced of that to the point that when I need to do some local edits with Paint.NET is, my workflow is:

1) Develop RAW with LR
2) Tell LR to export TIFF @ 16 bit color depth
3) Edit TIFF with Paint.NET
4) Import edited TIFF back into LR
5) Tell LR to export JPEG with desired file size, photo width or height and sharpening settings
6) Archive/publish photo

Have you found a Paint.NET plugin that handles resizing/sharpening with higher quality than the built-in algorithms?

Ciao!

rokvi · Jul 8, 2012

Thanks for the input, I really appreciate it. I decided to JUST use the LR skin smoothing and a few heals here and there. I left the mole as its, who she is as you say and thats it.