too dark too bright?

eswebster · Aug 5, 2013

I have an IPS monitor that is too bright, even at 0 brightness (ASUS sucks) and i try and use my other monitors to balance brightness and darkenss in images but it makes it a pain to get right. Just looking for some feedback on these. They are of my son and wife... also wishing i could lose some of his frogbelly white leg in the image. Thanks for the help.

Also does anyone have a good way of calibrating darkenss and lightness? I have a spyder 4 pro but like i said the monitor means manual calibration afterward... Super frustrating.

eswebster · Aug 5, 2013

almost 100 views and no responses, just downright hurtful

.... lol.

Just let me know if the whole thing is garbage or not. I was trying to darken up the clouds with a gradient map, looked good on the monitor at home but on other monitors it looks WAY too dark. Not the subtle texture i was going for. Really just trying to put some detail back into an almost blown out sky. If you are afraid to ask, she's pregnant...and my 3 yr old is a giant.... now we have it all out there.

The_Traveler · Aug 5, 2013

IMO, the darkness/lightness of the picture is fine.
I don't get what you are trying to show me: nice-looking prop plane, mommy holding son, elegant mom staring into distance, pregnancy bump - it's a really mixed message and I can't figure it out.

vintagesnaps · Aug 5, 2013

Doesn't really look too light or too dark, it's just a lot of gray and medium grayish blue similar tones - maybe play with the contrast a little? It might have been better to not have the toe of the shoe cut off but - he looks long legged for three!! I always seem to notice details and there's an edge of something light gray to the right of her, and a light scrape on the top right blade so I might think about a bit of a crop on the top and right sides - or print it and put it in a frame which might hide or minimize those.

I think it's a nice sharp image and a charming photo of the two of them together (or three of them), he's endearing and she looks lovely pregnant and I'd display it - with this one maybe dad should take precedence over photographer - I think you're a nut if you don't display this in your home!

(Just goes to show you I guess different people can see the same photo differently, I actually like the perspective too.)

tecboy · Aug 5, 2013

Your photo is not garbag. My dumb critique is the cloudy looks kinda boring. If you have another chance to shoot, I'm thinking shooting in the evening while the sun is going down. Remember, that is my dumb critique.

eswebster · Aug 5, 2013

The traveler: the only purpose is really family memories of us taking our little guy to the airfield. Being that I love photography I want to capture our memories as more than blah snapshots. So its the two of them, while he was doing something besides the super awkward looking "cheese" smile 3 year olds do. Lol. I do see what you're talking about though, there is a lot of different themes going on. Se la vie....

Vintagesnaps: i like the cropping ideas, the grey on the outside of the frame is the landing gear. Thanks for the kind words. I have been amazed at how sharp my 28-70 2.8L has been, this was shot at 2.8 and 38mm I belive... unsharpened. Thinking about getting it in an 11x14... its way more dad than photographer

tecboy: i would have loved to be out there during golden hour but we were there mid day and overcast so the light was blah at best. Not even blue sky for some color.

Thanks for your C&C I just get really leery of the monitor i use and was surprised how different it looked at the monitor at work. Thinking the one at home is more representative, and calibrated, albeit a bit too bright.