Toddler Portrait

Aedai · Aug 25, 2014

Derrel said:
I don't mind the background fabric...it's colorful and little kid-like in its nature...pastel, bright,patterned, and the strong pattern design has two nice diagonals in it which sort of aim toward the eyes. Her eyes though, really do look odd. I'm not sure what you meant when you said this was the first time you had tried processing "like this". I assumed there was some type of work performed that made the eyes a bit more emphatic than they normally would be, but perhaps not. The photo *is* very eye-catching, very striking. I find it a very engaging landscape-oriented close-up portrait. Not necessarily a warm and fuzzy feeling type shot, but nonetheless a very strong, engaging photo that just grabs my attention, mostly due to the eye contact.

I mean for editing (since I've joined this site anyway) I normally had used Lightroom to process. I'm not really strong in Lightroom but I tried it out. I've had Photoshop since I was 12 so I finally used it to try editing. Definitely my preferred option.

So much easier, for me anyway.

DanielOhana said:
Very sweet picture.
I think you should not touch the eyes beacuse she has that natural beautiful eyes.
good luck!

I didn't touch up her eyes. I mean they were edited along with the pictures as a whole but I actually didn't do them on their own.

This is the original. It was just about dark outside. It was actually just a quick shot while picking chokecherries.

frommrstomommy · Aug 25, 2014

I played with it. I definitely didn't do anything really to her eyes specifically except a tiny bump in exposure to get the eye whites whiter. She's adorable

Derrel · Aug 25, 2014

I like how clearly your camera-to-face-right-elbow-out reflection can be seen in each of her eye's in the edit frommrstommommy did! She is an adorable child. I did look back at your earlier thread, and think this is quite an engaging shot...it's almost mesmerizing...that GAZE!!!! In the edit right above this reply, her eyes look natural; in the original edit they looked 'processed', as the look is often called. Eye enhancement has become a very common technique over the last few years,and I thought that was ewhat you man when you said this shot was the first time you had tried editing "this way". I think the edit frommrstomommy performed on the SOOC file is excellent! Looks great! Very good skin tone look for a toddler-age kid. What makes this shot nice is the way the child fills the majority of the frame, has good eye placement within the frame, and the symmetrical body positioning (shoulders squared up, head up, looking ahead, direct eye contact with the lens) works really well with the orientation of the frame. This is a GOOD example of a horizontal close-up. A very good example of one.

Aedai · Aug 25, 2014

I agree, I really adore your edit frommrstommommy and I'd really really really like to know what process you went through to achieve it. Pretty please???