Too Cool for School

[Mandolin]

On the rare occasion he wants his picture taken, my little man's a star. No mom bias here

Natural light, no fill (obvs), slight crop. CC welcomed!

http://tyler punk by MandolinPics, on Flickr

 

[sscarmack]

I like it. Pull back just a smidge on the crop, so you don't cut the top of his hair. Or pull a little tighter.

 

[Derrel]

I like it. Pull back just a smidge on the crop, so you don't cut the top of his hair. Or pull a little tighter.

Those were my thoughts exactly. I like the lighting and simple, harmonizing background, which together make HIM the star. So the basic concept is very solid. What bothers me most is that his eyes and chin and face are so low within the frame...he's as I call it, "Riding low in the frame." In this particular case, with the faux hawk hair, the hair touching the top of the frame further emphasizes the low eyeball placement within the frame. If I scroll the photo up to the top of my screen and crop off the top of his head, and envision the left and right cropped off to get back to a square, I can see the makings of a good really tight,tight close-up shot. I might also rotate this 1 degree clockwise.

One thing I have noticed about square format composition is that things that are centered have a lot of impact, and things that are low in the frame can also have a LOT of "pull", visually, and that basically, whenever the eyes in a square portrait fall well below the mid-line level, the shot feels very,very bottom-heavy.

 

[robbins.photo]

Ok, couple of quick things.. ss already mentioned the crop (good call there). I wasn't able to see the EXIF data on Flickr for this, so not sure what Aperture/Shutter Speed settings were used. The focus looks pretty good, for portraits you really want to focus on the eyes if you can and it looks like that part worked out pretty well. Looks like you got the camera down to his level as well, which is great, a lot of folks have a tendancy to shoot down when shooting kids.

The two things I would probably recommend - first would be a different color background, the one your using appears to be a light brown and as a result really not as much seperation between his hair/skin and the background. I think a little more seperation here would make for a stronger image overall. The second would be the lighting, a fill flash or adding another light source somwhere off to his right to soften some of the shadows on the right side I think would also probably improve things overall.

But all in all I think it's a very good image.

 

[snerd]

....... a fill flash or adding another light source somwhere off to his right to soften some of the shadows on the right side I think would also probably improve things overall.......

When you say off to his right, you mean off to "his" left, correct? I've gotten confused a few times, but this seems to be the usual description for left/right directions in photography.

And nice portrait, Mandolin!

 

[Mandolin]

Thanks, all. I did notice I cropped off the top of his 'do. Bah...didn't mean to do that. The background is actually just a wall in our house...I don't have any official backdrops, so...well...it is what it is. And I just got my first speedlite a week ago, so I can work with some fill! I appreciate the feedback!