Portait shots! Please help with CC!

[AmandaLeeVisuals]

Both shot with Canon t3i 50mm lens. Manual focus (I couldn't get it to focus behind her glasses in the closeup). Shot RAW. Original shots were warm, and I edited in Photoshop. Could someone please help in critiquing my editing skils? The looks of both these photos were done on purpose, so if it's completely terrible, please let me know. I'm a noobie and I could really use some pointers. These are taken on auto, but I got some other shots with my 70-210 2.8 manual lens, which I clearly had to adjust the levels. i want to say the second shot was taken with it but my Adobe Bridge is telling me it was the 50mm, probably because it didn't recognize the manual lens. I don't remember.


Thanks!

 

[acparsons]

Did you intentionally desaturate the photo? The light is a bit hard and reflects in many places on her glasses, I would use a diffuser or reflector, which would also ake care of the shadow in the photo on the left. The second photo seems way too cramped, her wrist is cut off on the right and hand with a drink on the left, additionally I would prefer to see the whole boot in the photo. The headshot is cut off at the neck, you should get some shoulders in the photo as it looks like she has been beheaded. I am an amateur and learning as well, hope my comments were insightful.

 

[AmandaLeeVisuals]

Funny you say the light is hard, I didn't use flash at all in either one of them. It was actually a dark bar. There was one light overhead, but it started getting late so they dimmed the lights a bit. I agree with getting more body in the shot. It was just cramped in there and I couldn't really move back. In all actuality these were candids. she was having a conversation with someone, and I asked her not to pose or smile.

 

[Braineack]

There's blatant technical flaws in both the photography and photoshop work so it's really hard to give any CC here.

 

[AmandaLeeVisuals]

There's blatant technical flaws in both the photography and photoshop work so it's really hard to give any CC here.

Example of one or two, please? And looking at your track history for forum posts, you don't really give CC in the first place, when in all actuality, is always possible. I can't tell if you're trolling or not.....

 

[Braineack]

On the vertical shot: the focus was missed completely. You can see the cords are in focus on her thigh just under her knee, so you missed her eyes by almost 2'. Then to make up for it you sharpened her eyes to the point that they are just turning into white pixel blocks; way beyond the point of fixing any anti-aliasing. You went NR overboard where the picture is starting to look like melted crayons -- her hair just looks like it was painted on using the smudge tool. I don't like the blue tint to the shot, where the blacks are actually blue now, but that's more personal preference.

I think it could have been pretty good if you didn't miss the focus and didn't work it so much, framing is a little tight, but you said you didn't have much room...just wish there was more breathing room to frame left. Resized smaller like the thumbnail it's hard to tell, so it would make for her a nice avatar or something in the least. But the styling of it looks almost as trendy as her non-perscripton glasses.

You could try to embrace the lighting you had to work with, and end up with something like this: http://www.jackiealpers.com/data/photos/120_1drinking_2.jpg exposure for the face and embrace the darkness of the surrounding, instead of jacking up the brightness to the entire image to try to make it look like it was shot in good lighting conditions after the fact.

I also see that you have the contrast and saturation pushed to +25. Is that in camera or did you also do that in PS?

 

[The_Traveler]

One thing you need to remember is that the camera will try and bring the lighting to middle grey so an image in a dark bar will be 'over-exposed' by 2 stops and what you will get out won't look like a dark bar. So, in order to get what you see you will have to correct the camera by using exposure compensation, in the case e.c.-2

 

[KmH]

Your editing cannot be properly C&C'd without us being able to see the original unedited photos and you explaining what edit steps, tools, techniques you used..

A solution for the focusing issue with the glasses is to remove the lenses from the glasses frames.
That also eliminates the offset distortion the glasses lens cause, while also eliminating the chances some light source will be reflected in the glasses.