Wisconsin in the Winter

[chaseyourdreams]

Got the pleasure of doing a senior photo shoot with this beautiful lady. Jessica was quite the trooper with no coat or gloves half the time, and 10 degree weather! Burrr! <3 Chase Your Dreams Photography

 

[ColRay]

Nice shot.. I also like the off centre framing .

 

[cgipson1]

I don't mind the horizontal format here as much as some... but why did you chop off her fingers, when you had vertical space you could have used? The lighting is very flat, and she needed fill light badly in her eyes.. she has mild coon eyes, where the sockets are darker than the rest of her face. You have the snow totally blown out.... and the sky as well. Don't care for the processing, (desaturation) or some goofy action / preset. Processing like this does not fix or improve a marginal image, it just adds another flaw.

Please post the original without the processing...

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[Pallycow]

What can I add? lol. Charlie and I seem to have same taste in flaws.

at first glance, the things that stood out most to me, was blown snow showing no detail and how flat it was. But like I said, Charlie already hit on those two points...and more.

I see what you were trying to do with the hor framing and the sticks/logs...but it doesn't work for me. although the lines may lead to subject...the subject is not prominent enough to hold interest...which is the point of a senior shoot.

Our eyes tend to want to go left to right, if you flip canvas horizontally, it just might make your eyes land on the subject and not want to drift away.

 

[chaseyourdreams]

I think my biggest thing right now that I could agree with is the cutting off the fingers (I try SO hard to watch for that), and the fact that yes, being a senior session more focus should fall on her. Now as far as editing goes, you're advice is amazing but I can honestly say I have NO idea what I'm doing in Elements. I use actions too much, and try to adjust levels most of the time.

 

[Pallycow]

still too much neg space, but your eyes don't struggle to land on your subject.

 

[LaFoto]

I much prefer the "flip" that Pallycow created! She feels so much more "in the right place" in that one!
Yes, sad to see her fingertips "go", but - oh well. Now it happened.

 

[sekhar]

You typically want to leave space in the front of the person rather than the back. In your image she's turned to look at the end of the frame...if she was turned the other way (or you composed to add space ahead of her), it would have worked better. You can still fix this some in Photoshop (copy as layer, flip, and mask out the everything other than her).

 

[amolitor]

Blowing out the snow and the sky was a solid choice, given that the option was to drop the girl into blackness. Given the trouble people go to to light white seamless backgrounds to produce precisely this effect, I gotta say that I think it's ok. Sure, with fill flash you could have lit the girl up, and then recovered some texture in the snow and sky, which you would then have to wrestle with to make it look white without looking flat. I say, let it go flat, it's fine. It's a picture of a girl, not a frozen lake.

I find the image a little incongruous. Why is this pretty young woman dressed in a light sweater sitting out in what appears to be an icy wasteland? Is this still from a scene cut from Fargo?

I am surprised that nobody has complained about the tree growing out of her head. The tree itself doesn't bother me, but the fact that her hair fades into the blur of the winter thicket behind her is a little bothersome. Shooting from a slightly higher angle would have placed her head entirely against the snow, which might (or might not) have produced a more pleasing result.

 

[chaseyourdreams]

Blowing out the snow and the sky was a solid choice, given that the option was to drop the girl into blackness. Given the trouble people go to to light white seamless backgrounds to produce precisely this effect, I gotta say that I think it's ok. Sure, with fill flash you could have lit the girl up, and then recovered some texture in the snow and sky, which you would then have to wrestle with to make it look white without looking flat. I say, let it go flat, it's fine. It's a picture of a girl, not a frozen lake.

I find the image a little incongruous. Why is this pretty young woman dressed in a light sweater sitting out in what appears to be an icy wasteland? Is this still from a scene cut from Fargo?

I am surprised that nobody has complained about the tree growing out of her head. The tree itself doesn't bother me, but the fact that her hair fades into the blur of the winter thicket behind her is a little bothersome. Shooting from a slightly higher angle would have placed her head entirely against the snow, which might (or might not) have produced a more pleasing result.

That darn tree is going to bother me forever! but hey, it's stuff to keep eye out for when shooting! Mostly the main thing my eye looks for is the spacing and is there anything cut off that shouldn't be. Unfortunately tilted the camera a little too high. I would have loved to take a million different angles of this picture and I wish now that I had shot from the end of the tree to get it so the tree was creating a vanishing point almost. I do not know Fargo but that's the second time that movie/show whatever it is has been mentioned to me. Odd week.

Thank you SO much everyone, I really enjoy this forum. People really put forth the effort to helping others better their work instead of bashing or making people feel incompetent. Thanks again, I learned a lot. I'm sure a lot more to come. I appreciate everyone's responses.

-Britt
Chase Your Dreams Photography