Wanted opinions on processing

[12sndsgood]

A baby photo I took of my niece at 3 months I believe. I liked how this turned out, but keep coming back to it and not i'm not so sure how i'm feeling about it now. Would like to hear some opinions about it.


Maggie-15 by Square1 photography, on Flickr

 

[tirediron]

It's a little tight for my taste, and I'm not a huge fan of the horizontally blurred foreground line (blanket?) but those are minor niggles. I will say though, that the WB seems wayyyy out. I'm seeing a strong green/yellow cast on my calibrated monitor.

 

[Derrel]

I think this is an "effect" or "action" type of processing look, and not a WB issue. I'm kind of lukewarm on this desaturated/monochrome look, for this particular baby photo. It's "okay", yes, but I dunno...there are a zillion different ways this could be processed. I think this specific look is not-quite-perfect for this shot. I think the baby's eyes seem to be placed awfully low in the frame...the hat and its bow above the eyes command a LOT of visual attention, as do those two big black background areas. If there is more foreground available, I think including more, would help balance out the top-weight that this shot has. (Not sure if this is a crop or as-shot). as tirediron said, it does feel a bit tight, a bit cramped, and I think just more space around the baby would help.

 

[12sndsgood]

This was just in the way i processed it. I still play around and try new ways of processing to give new looks to my photos. this was a more desaturated look. The bow on top of her head was about the size of her head. it seems to be the thing now. you'd think people would realise how small a babies head is and make flowers that correlate to that size instead of flowers the size of there heads.

This was most likley pretty close to as shot out of camera as far as the crop goes. I used to shoot wider and then crop everything, but lately as I shoot I have been trying to get the shot cropped how I saw it in camera just to save time processing. this was more a close up shot and framed the from oof blanket barely shows up and I don't think its a huge distraction. I always tend to get a few tight shots of the baby. I tried to keep the babies eye in the lower left 1/3rds

Just at first go around I really liked the look of this. but now I think the skin tone just makes the baby look a little to off for me.

 

[Derrel]

>SNIP>>>

Just at first go around I really liked the look of this. but now I think the skin tone just makes the baby look a little to off for me.

THAT is my experience on many photos--that the very-first renderings seem fine, at the time, but then later...I start to think of different, perhaps better ways of rendering. Honestlyu, I think that's pretty normal, pretty common across the spectrum of shooters and subject matter. What I think makes the above rendering style not-quite-perfect is that subtle greenish/yellowish bias to the skin tones...my belief is that people do not like greenish fleshtones....not even a little bit! Making skin tones on caucasian skin look warmer, and more-reddish seems to meet with wide approval, and even if it looks unnaturally ruddy, there is a substantial percentage of viewers that will say they like that ruddy skin tone look. AGFA brand Agfacolor medium-speed 35mm color slide film....now that stuff used to be warm! Not very natural,and yet, for some scenes, the excessively warm rendering looked fantastic.

On the opposite end, I think some of the "ice" and "ice-tone" effects (strong blues) look pretty good too. But the greenish and greenish/yellowish tints just do not resonate on skintone. Even if the tint is very subtle, there seems to be some kind of innate bias against that color "direction" for caucasian skintones in photos,at least among people I've known.

 

[12sndsgood]

Yeah, I have just started playing around with more and diffrent processing to just give myself some more options and to help improve my processing skills in general. For the most part I keep things pretty clean and standard on a lot of my stuff so this is more experimentation.

 

[cgipson1]

Green yellow... not pretty! Also framed too tight... and the blur in front bottom is distracting

 

[LouR]

snip

This was most likley pretty close to as shot out of camera as far as the crop goes. I used to shoot wider and then crop everything, but lately as I shoot I have been trying to get the shot cropped how I saw it in camera just to save time processing. this was more a close up shot and framed the from oof blanket barely shows up and I don't think its a huge distraction. I always tend to get a few tight shots of the baby. I tried to keep the babies eye in the lower left 1/3rds

Big mistake with portraits. By shooting as close to the crop you have in mind, you don't allow for changes or mistakes. It is always better to leave room and crop in. That is not going to overwhelm your processing time and will save you headaches down the road. Cropping in close in camera without the client seeing all the possibilities could deter a potential sale. It also affects framing possibilities. An 11x14 is not the same ratio as, say a 16x20 or a 4x6 and by cropping in-camera you've eliminated many different sizes or ratios.

 

[12sndsgood]

Thanks for everyones thoughts on the matter. definatly nice to hear diffrent people's views on things. for babies i like close crops for some reason. i do get all the other shots as well and what you said does make sence Lou because I did have issues getting this one wrapped in cavas, going in so tight did require me to do just black banding on the canvas print versus the typical wrapped shot. But on the other side of things I did get a 20x24 canvas print sold out of the deal. so at least i'm not the only one that likes tight crops lol do think im going to set this processing aside for now. go another route with it.