You got my attention........

[Elizabeth30]

First and foremost-step away from the editing program until you get calibrated. Your colors are all over the place and the EXTREME contrast is giving you huge black blobs that will suck your eye into them.

1. I fail to see where the kids look cut and pasted here. I love the scene. I think that maybe the original had the potential to be a beautiful shot. Get rid of the stop sign and the street sign too. They are incredible eye suckers as well as the black blobs in the children. The color COULD work if it were a little more subtle.
2. needs fill flash. her eyes are black holes for the most part. Again, I think the original has some potential, but your color thing is really killing it badly. It also looks like you put a soft focus on it because the bow was in focus and not the eyes
3. Might have the potential to be a great moment capture, but as it is her face is so dark with no light to the eyes so she's all mouth. She's also very GLOWING orange.
4. is 85% blacks to the point that you have a black hole at the end of the path and you can barely make out the second child which is blending into the blacks at the right. The color is extremely warm.

I suspect you do not see the glowing orange. Monitors out of the box tend to be very cool in color so you think that your images are blue or cool when they are not. You must calibrate before you will be able to actually even see your images properly, let alone edit.

Wow, my monitor must be WAY off then because when you say that you can barley see the second child in photo #4, on my monitor you can make her out fine, some shadows on her maybe and not sure about this "orange glow" you keep talking about so yea, I will look into that.
As for photo #1 so it looks fake because of the lighting? I deleted the RAW format of this photo but I have the original in JPG, so her it is...... and I liked the street sign and stop sign in it.... I thought it gave the photo a bit of character.....
This family is a close friend of mine and this photo shoot I did for her was by far the best I've done. Considering my little knowledge and not so great equipment. but I LOVED the scenery here and got sooooo many goood shots! When I say good I know you're thinking, bad but in terms of artistic they are great to me! oh and BTW I'm going to change my settings so you can edit this if you like......

 

[Ballistics]

Book = Understanding Exposure - by Bryan Peterson
Available in most book stores or anywhere on the web

Have you read this book?

 

[Elizabeth30]

....... You have peeked my curiosity.

Sometimes I hate myself. I believe you meant PIQUED.

Yea....... I'm not a very good speller ...... lol

 

[Elizabeth30]

. I would crop #4 from it's current 3:2 aspect ratio to a 1:1 aspect ratio (square).

I have been editing in PS CS5 for some time now and have to figure out how to crop proportionality? there must be a setting for this but they do not seem to work??

 

[Nikon_Josh]

Your composition is OK at times, but what is going on with the White balance in these shots? The colour is completely off as previously stated and some of the shots are quite soft due to shooting wide open. What White balance setting are you using?

On a positive note, you seem to have an eye for capturing moments. So you clearly do have some natural photographic ability, all four shots have something about them in terms of capture. All four could of been 'great photos' if taken with good photographic skill. But image 3, the shadows on the subject and the bright sunshine in the background is horrid and by not fully evaluating the light in front of you, you have in my opinion ruined a potentially great shot.

On a side note, If you are doing this seriously! Ditch the 50 1.8 lens immediately, the 'bokeh' shown in these samples is nervous, distracting and poor. This isn't your fault, its a feature of an old lens design. Buy a Sigma 50 1.4 and enjoy some smooth OOF rendering. You will be surprised at how much of a difference it will make to the overall look of your images.

 

[RebeccaAPhotography]

In the crop box it has the options to do it. My laptop crapped out so I can't be more descriptive except when u do click on the crop tool you have the options on the panel above ((really hard to explain)) I think the one that can be opened and dragged down to the left has the ratio options. Sorry not much help.

So I'm at work and read thru half your other thread and gave up too long. Lol and read this. My 1cent study the basics girlie! Start back at square one of the exposure triangle. Did you get that book understanding exposure? Def do! You will not regret it!

I too was in your same exact boat!! Literally said the same things with my first post. Now that I look back I am like how naive was I!?! I do not charge any more! I work with friends and since I've found this site my work has improved immensely! Just keep at it

 

[Elizabeth30]

So here are some photographic light resouerces you can use:

Light Science and Magic, Fourth Edition: An Introduction to Photographic Lighting

Strobist: Lighting 101

http://neilvn.com/tangents/flash-photography-techniques/

So many great resources everyone has given me!! Thank you! I have started a compilation of all the links that everyone has sent into a word doc so I can start to go through them all!

 

[Elizabeth30]

1. I absolutely LOVE the concept. I think getting a little lower and moving a little bit to the right would help the composition. I think this is a good one to have a little on the "warm" side, but maybe not quite so much.

3. Cute headshot of a sweet face!

3. You really captured the moment with this one. Her face is hidden in the shadows though.

4. Eh, the other three are better

Thank you so much for the kind words!

 

[Elizabeth30]

Oh, and that little kid in #2? TOO. CUTE. Looks like me when I was that age, with that bright red hair.

My best friends niece, isn't she a doll!! LOVE red hair! My mama has red hair

 

[KmH]

. I would crop #4 from it's current 3:2 aspect ratio to a 1:1 aspect ratio (square).

I have been editing in PS CS5 for some time now and have to figure out how to crop proportionality? there must be a setting for this but they do not seem to work??

if you want a 1:1 aspect ratio put a 1 in the Width value box and a 1 in the Horizontal value box there on the Tool Options Bar. Leave the Resolution box blank.

When you drag out the crop it will be 1:1. You can resize it by clicking on and dragging any corner.

Do the same for a 3:2 (horizontal) or a 2:3 (vertical) aspect ratio, 5:4/4:5 (8x10, 10x8) or 7:5/5:7 (5x7, 7x5).

Oh! I should add - If you want to move the dragged out crop area, just click/hold and drag inside the crop area.

 

[Elizabeth30]

I don't think #1 looks cut & pasted at all. The light looks very normal to me.

As for everything else... +1

What does +1 mean?

 

[Elizabeth30]

Book = Understanding Exposure - by Bryan Peterson
Available in most book stores or anywhere on the web

Have you read this book?

um...... are u being sarcastic here? isn't it obvious?

 

[bazooka]

It means I agree with what everyone else has said.

 

[Ballistics]

Book = Understanding Exposure - by Bryan Peterson
Available in most book stores or anywhere on the web

Have you read this book?

um...... are u being sarcastic here? isn't it obvious?

Huh? I'm asking the person I quoted the question.

 

[Elizabeth30]

Have you read this book?

um...... are u being sarcastic here? isn't it obvious?

Huh? I'm asking the person I quoted the question.

HAHA, ok