pre-prom photoshoot

tron · May 28, 2009

so i took these pics for 2 friends of mine. there were something like 25 edited pics but i picked a handful at random to show here for critique.

they were running really late so these were all done within a 10 minute time span

taken with a d40, sb600, and 55-200vr. kind of a noob setup but i hope you guys could give me some feedback on these!

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musicaleCA · May 28, 2009

Who cares about the camera, you've got a fair bit of glass going there. I've got a similar set-up, to your Nikon system, just with the Canon 450D at my system's core (and no other cameras or lenses...have to say I'm a bit jealous of that >.> ). But moving on...

Great job.

I love the colours of her dress and how you captured them against a complementary background in the first shot. The thing I'd like to see is just a bit more even light on the faces in the second shot; judicious use of the dodge and burn tools will fix that up. I don't like the last shot from an aesthetic point of view, simply because there wasn't any of her face in the shot, which I feel detracts from the purpose (or what I'm interpreting as the purpose) of the shoot; to take stunning pictures of them together before their prom.

Your use of DoF is great. The background is blurry but not a slab of blurred colour, and in the first leaving it on a small aperture works wonders. ^.^ The subtle vignetting is also good and gets to job done without being obvious (really obvious vignetting drives me a little mad).

The last thing, as long as there are no objections to retouching from them (blurring, softening, and all that good stuff counts as distortion of their likeness), I'd soften their faces a little, and fix up blemishes with the heal brush (and maybe a little clone stamp too for those little lines).

tron · May 28, 2009

thanks for the great critiques and comments! wow that really means a lot to get that much helpful information. and yeah im glad you noticed the complimentary colors, i picked this spot because i thought it would go nicely with their clothes

also one thing i noticed was i cut off limbs a little bit in here. maybe this was a sign of me being rushed, im usually good with that sort of thing

oh well i hope theyre happy with the pics! thanks again for the advice

keep it coming guys!

musicaleCA · May 28, 2009

Good you noticed the limbs. It's okay to cut-off limbs, as long as you don't do it at the joints. A couple of the shots are thus a little debatable (the vignetting makes up for it), but hey, for a 10 min job, you did quite well. If I were them, I'd be very pleased.

Big · May 28, 2009

Those are amazing, I hope I can take shots as good as those in my future! Although the girl made most of the picture, she's gorgeous!

Josh220 · May 28, 2009

I know this one is done, but if you ever try to do shoots like this again, try having them turn towards each other slightly, and have his right hand hold her left hand in front of them. It'll help if their bodies aren't both facing straight at the camera.

Composition is good though!

tron · May 28, 2009

Josh220 said:
I know this one is done, but if you ever try to do shoots like this again, try having them turn towards each other slightly, and have his right hand hold her left hand in front of them. It'll help if their bodies aren't both facing straight at the camera.

Composition is good though!

thats great advice, ill be sure to keep that in mind next time. wow im really happy you guys gave me the kind of feedback you did, this is really good **** :thumbup:

sebarrier3 · May 29, 2009

I love these! The vignetting looks great but I would try to lighten up their faces a little in most of the shots. Great job!!

Dcrymes84 · May 29, 2009

very awesome pictures

tron · May 29, 2009

sebarrier3 said:
I love these! The vignetting looks great but I would try to lighten up their faces a little in most of the shots. Great job!!

thanks man

maybe i should try the dodge/burn on the faces?

musicaleCA · May 29, 2009

A little dodging around the eyes might help, particularly in the first picture. I'm a little sceptical though, because you're going to be bringing-out noise, and that can start making things look unsharp and at worst grainy and off-colour. >.< If you go over the areas of the eyes with the eye dropper and keep an eye on your histogram, you can get an idea of how dark those areas are, and how much lightening you can do safely.

tron · Jun 1, 2009

thanks for the feedback! i gave the pictures to them yesterday and they loved them, so thats always a plus

i definately think im gonna take the dodge/burn advice, i tried it a little bit to lighten some of the bushes but i think youre right about the eyes.

:thumbup: thanks guys!

musicaleCA · Jun 1, 2009

Yep. A little lightening around the eyes is almost always beneficial. If you have the money to spend and have Photoshop CS4, PhotoTools Pro from OnOne software is fantastic for touching-up portraits. It has a few tools I'm really fond of, like a "Magic Eye Fixer", which is really like sharpening and doging rolled into one, but I think it also lightens the whites of the eyes a lot more. Sure you can do all that yourself with brushes, masking, filters, and adjustment layers, but PhotoTools can help you accomplish the same in a matter of minutes or even seconds (not counting the time you wait for Photoshop to chew on all the binary to process the photo).

You might also want to try Viveza from Nik Software. A great plug-in for dealing with things like those bushes. And all of them have free trials, I do believe. ^.^

tron · Jun 3, 2009

damn ill download those asap, thanks for the tips! im a college student so my ass is always broke hence im using hacked versions of cs2 :/ hey if it does the job then i wont complain! haha but im for sure gonna look at those trials, thanks again