wb, brightness check. pls help!

[mmaria]

My laptop monitor is too bright so I tend to overprocess images in pp. Because it is so bright I can't set proper black point and I end up with too strong and contrasty images, which is exactly what I do not want. And also it is too blue-ish so I end up with too orange-ish images

I brought my laptop at work to connect it to my "at work" monitor and then to calibrate it... well that didn't produce anything useful, so I'm back and stuck with my laptop which apparently can't be properly calibrated. I did some tweaking on laptop monitor and it seems to me that now is better situation.

I need you guys to tell me about wb, brightness in these (documentary type photographs). Are they ok now?

Thanks!

of course any other c&c are welcome.

 

[paigew]

These are really cute (#1 is my favorite)!. Skin looks cool and underexposed. Last one is too bright

Why can't you calibrate your laptop? Calibration will help with brightness and contrast issues too.

 

[mmaria]

These are really cute (#1 is my favorite)!. Skin looks cool and underexposed.

Why can't you calibrate your laptop? Calibration will help with brightness and contrast issues too.

Those are not supposed to be cute I'm photographing children in need for a project.

About the skin, you're right I'll try to bring the life back to their faces. Underexposed, some probably, because I had to work with the camera and bright midday sun, and tried to place them in a shade.

Well, laptop monitor suck with or without calibration....

 

[paigew]

oh sorry must have misunderstood

quick play:

 

[mmaria]

If you put "these" in bw you can't see much details about their worn clothes , dirt and things that really show that those kids are in need.

I'm visiting poor families because I'm doing a project about them to try to raise some money for them. This particular visit was very difficult. I had harsh sun, 15 minutes, 4 children, a house on some weird hill, some adults going around...

thank you pagew! If you want to know more http://www.thephotoforum.com/forum/people-photography/341556-c-c-please.html , http://www.thephotoforum.com/forum/people-photography/341967-c-c-please.html,
http://www.thephotoforum.com/forum/...1477-rlfs-eos-600d-visit-no-1-c-c-please.html, http://www.thephotoforum.com/forum/people-photography/342405-opinions-please.html

 

[paigew]

See I disagree /\

In the first photo the w/b was far too cool giving the kids an 'undead' look. LOL (walking dead lover here). You can still see (if not more) the dirty faces etc. Ont the second the photo was over exposed. Pay attention to the hand, in your edit its almost blown. The skin is so bright you can see no detail in the face/skin. Lowering allows to you see all the dirt/grime.

These don't scream "poor kids" to me! They say happy, dirty, kids, playing outside, exploring . They could be anyone's kids.

 

[tirediron]

Buy a proper hardware calibrator, a Colormunki, Spyder, etc. There is NO OTHER way to properly calibrate a monitor. One of other issues specific to laptops is viewing angle. The brightness and colours will change drastically from one screen angle to another. What I do to avoid problems when I'm processing on my laptop is to bring up a .jpg image of the zone system chart and angle my screen until I can see all of the divisions in it, that way I know I'm working at the proper angle and the same angle every time.

As far as these images go, IMO, you are way short of your stated mark. I looked at the iamges without reading any of the posts and my first thought was, "Those look like happy kids having fun on Grandad's farm".

 

[limr]

I don't see these kids as 'happy'. No, they're not all standing there with pathetic looks on their faces or anything, but I still don't see how that translates into the idea that they could be any happy kids from any kind of family anywhere in the world. They're wearing ill-fitting, dirty, repaired clothes. They're playing next to concrete, barbed wire and dirty bathtubs. And they're kids so they don't know any other kind of life and are making the best of what little they have. And except for the little one, they are already developing suspicion in their eyes. That's not the same as happy and well-fed.

 

[mmaria]

See I disagree /\

In the first photo the w/b was far too cool giving the kids an 'undead' look. LOL (walking dead lover here). You can still see (if not more) the dirty faces etc. Ont the second the photo was over exposed. Pay attention to the hand, in your edit its almost blown. The skin is so bright you can see no detail in the face/skin. Lowering allows to you see all the dirt/grime.

These don't scream "poor kids" to me! They say happy, dirty, kids, playing outside, exploring . They could be anyone's kids.

Yes I agree about editing critiques. Thanks, those were my concerns, I'll reedit.

Buy a proper hardware calibrator, a Colormunki, Spyder, etc. There is NO OTHER way to properly calibrate a monitor. One of other issues specific to laptops is viewing angle. The brightness and colours will change drastically from one screen angle to another. What I do to avoid problems when I'm processing on my laptop is to bring up a .jpg image of the zone system chart and angle my screen until I can see all of the divisions in it, that way I know I'm working at the proper angle and the same angle every time.

As far as these images go, IMO, you are way short of your stated mark. I looked at the images without reading any of the posts and my first thought was, "Those look like happy kids having fun on Grandad's farm".

I have ColorMunki Display and I did calibrate my laptop's monitor. But after the calibration I still have issues and that's way I asked about wb and brightness.

Maybe I'm just not that objective because I really know where and in what condition they live.

 

[mmaria]

I don't see these kids as 'happy'. No, they're not all standing there with pathetic looks on their faces or anything, but I still don't see how that translates into the idea that they could be any happy kids from any kind of family anywhere in the world. They're wearing ill-fitting, dirty, repaired clothes. They're playing next to concrete, barbed wire and dirty bathtubs. And they're kids so they don't know any other kind of life and are making the best of what little they have. And except for the little one, they are already developing suspicion in their eyes. That's not the same as happy and well-fed.

I hope someone else will see what you saw here!

Thanks!

 

[KmH]

What type of display does your laptop have - a Twisted Nematic (TN) display, or a In-Plane Switching (IPS) display?

 

[mmaria]

tn it seems. It is Pavilion g7-1150us

 

[Aapoll]

I am just learning, but I have to say I agree that these children do not scream poverty to me. I am a mother of 3 and we live on a farm. We bought the property off of an elderly couple last year and there are lots of things that we have to clean up including an old dirty bathtub and hot tub. We also have lots of barbed wire fences. My children are often outside playing in the dirt and I do not let them do that in nice new clothes. So to me this looks like these shots could have been taken anywhere around here. I of course do not know the back story and if these were taken in a city then that might be a little different, or as a set with other photos but to me it's just children playing outside.

 

[mmaria]

I am just learning, but I have to say I agree that these children do not scream poverty to me. I am a mother of 3 and we live on a farm. We bought the property off of an elderly couple last year and there are lots of things that we have to clean up including an old dirty bathtub and hot tub. We also have lots of barbed wire fences. My children are often outside playing in the dirt and I do not let them do that in nice new clothes. So to me this looks like these shots could have been taken anywhere around here. I of course do not know the back story and if these were taken in a city then that might be a little different, or as a set with other photos but to me it's just children playing outside.

Thanks for the input! It's 4:2 so far. but really, what do you see when you look in the eyes?

I had other family and also comments were that they don't look like poor children. But what can I do there?! In this particular family, mother, father and granddad have no income and have 4 children to take care of.
I know that they are poor and have paper documents to confirm that fact.
All the photos will be sent as a set.

 

[pgriz]

There is another technique that you could explore for your purposes. It's deliberately cropping off a portion of a face so that the center of the image is on (say) a torn collar, or stained sweatshirt... This generally creates an unsettled feeling in the viewer since we expect to see a full face, and the eye will search for why the face is partly cut off. But for this to work, you have to get the exposure right, to reveal the maximum amount of detail. In this context, using the meter in spot-meter mode, and meting off the face should give you a well-exposed face, and that will let the other stuff (clothes, etc.) fall where it may.

Taking pictures in bright sunlight also doesn't convey poverty and despair as we tend to associate sunlight, blue skies, nice puffy clouds with wellbeing, happiness, warmth. An overcast day would provide for a duller, flatter light which could allow you to show the dirt on faces, hands, etc. (the overcast sky acts as a large softbox, as long as you adjust your exposure appropriately). This image shows flat light and lots of detail: http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2012/06/09/article-0-1384F792000005DC-815_964x667.jpg

Still another technique would be to blur the background somewhat (ie, use a thinner DOF) to imply a connection. That serves to keep the eye on the sharper bits, which you, as a photographer, select to show the viewers. Although the image is a drawing, it conveys this effect quite well: http://cdn3.thecreativefinder.com/userfiles/members/athenanoctua/13865/optimized-maxW950-kids.jpg.

Photography has always been a tool of propaganda as it is so easily manipulated to show a certain point of view. The key is to know what your intended audience expects. If one of your objectives is to make the viewer feel unsettled, then you'll need to explore the techniques that give that effect.

As for using your laptop to edit... I can connect a good monitor to my laptop, which I can adjust and calibrate, and I use this monitor to edit my images - maybe your laptop allows the same?