Self-Portrait Test Shot/Edit

[CreationsByCray]

As mentioned in my welcome post, I am looking into getting into sports and fitness photography in the very near future. Obviously, I will be doing plenty of practice before I fully emerge into this.

I decided one night to take a self portrait of myself to test out my Olympus Stylus VR-30 camera. The first photo is unedited, and the second was sharpened and brightened a bit via Auto Color (my apologies for not having the exact Sharpening number. Rookie mistake) using Photoscape. I know there are some obvious issues that need to be worked on, but I'm interested in hearing from you all as well. What do YOU think could be better? Did it look better unedited? Any and all critiques welcomed.

Here's more about it:
Lighting: room light (no extra)
Shutter Speed: 1/30 second
Aperture: F/3.0
Focal Length: 4 mm
ISO Speed: 200
Date Taken: Jul 2, 2017, 10:19:34 AM
Memory Card: Polaroid SD (not SDHC)

compareselfpotrait by Chris Ray, on Flickr

 

[Derrel]

I think the unedited shot is/was a bit too yellow on the skin tones...the edited shot looks better on the white ceiling tiles, and I think the skin tones look better, but the black shirt looks too blue (assuming ther T-shirt was black!). It's hard to tell without knowing your exact skin tone, the real T-shirt color, the wood paneling's exact color, and so on... In some ways the unedited shot looks GOOD on the shirt and the yellow and red flames design on the shirt, but...I dunno...

Editing images for color is tricky...sometimes the issue is in the shadows, other times the highlights...in this specific case, I think the edit is not quite right in the black tones of the hair, beard, and T-shirt, and the original looks better (to me) in the low tones in the unedited shot. In the unedited shot, the highlights seem a bit 'off' to me...

 

[CreationsByCray]

You're right, the shirt is supposed to be black.
My skin color is more milk chocolate, so (to me) does seem better on the unedited shot. It's pretty clear that lighting will be a big task to overcome, but with practice, I can and will get better at it.

 

[Derrel]

You're right, the shirt is supposed to be black.
My skin color is more milk chocolate, so (to me) does seem better on the unedited shot. It's pretty clear that lighting will be a big task to overcome, but with practice, I can and will get better at it.

Well, there's always room for improvement in anybody's photo game! I'd not worry too much about color balance or correct color, etc.. I think people obsess over getting "accurate" color, when what we all really want is pleasing color, even if it's not accurate. Fuji knows this--their color rendering on JPGs has long been a bit 'wrong' on greens, and to an extent on skin tones, but it is pleasing color! I've heard the same thing about Olympus and their straight out of camera color ideas, so--hey...you have an Olympus!

Maybe work on white balancing your indoor, artificial light shots. Getting the right white balance entered into the camera, manually, can often really, really help indoor, artificial light shots (as well as daylight, natural light shots). The other alternative is going wayyyyyyy off, and applying color filter effects: I personally grew VERY tired of boring, accurate, MacBeth Color Checker type level of color fanatacism...I grew TIRED of "accurate color", and now enjoy a lot of the color effects types of edits: Vintage, Ultimate Fighter, Hawaii Five'O, Matt's Wedding Fantasy, and several other Lightroom presets have become a big part in my own color photos these past few years.

You WILL get better at anything photographic that you shoot Chris, so, keep shooting, keep processing, keep finding your way in the photo game.