Baby in a pink haze

[wannabehorsephotographer]

I took this picture with her sitting in a brown chair that did nothing to complement the picture, but I thought her expression was priceless and i wanted to try to salvage the picture. Is the "haze" too much? Should I just leave the chair in the background? The chair is not hideous, just lackluster. Also what do you think of the photo itself? There was a window behind and in front of the baby which I thought added good soft light. I also used my flash to fill in her face a little. I shot the picture on auto mode - just now getting the confidence to explore semi-manual.

<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/24020312@N07/2300228371/" title="easterhaze by wannabehorsephotographer, on Flickr"><img src="http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2077/2300228371_63cf44296e.jpg" width="375" height="500" alt="easterhaze" /></a>

To do the haze I just added a couple of adjustment fill layers until I got the balance of color I was looking for and masked the areas where the baby is to try to hide the background. I just picked pink because I liked the color and she's a baby girl. Should I have gone with something more natural?

EXIF data:
f/3.5
ISO 400
Shut. Sp. 1/125
Focal length: 22.7mm

[nDre]

Hello wannabehorsephotographer, nice photo you have there.
I like the composition and the expression on her face, that's so nice.

One tiny thing, well there are two actually, that I don't particularly like is that for me, the photo looks abit underexposed and the color seems abit washed out.

I tried to play around with it and here's my result. :p

Cheers

[peeperita]

she's a beautiful little girl, with a winning, winsome expression......i can so understand why you worked as dilligently as you did with this image.....

i think the lighting is very nice....her skin looks as it should.....soft, smooth, and with just that tinge of blue all babies have naturally.....

i do think that your post work with the pink could use a little more practice.....there are some very difficult areas around the ruffles of her dress and hand...if the pink is still on a separate layer, i would consider a little clean up on those mentioned areas with an eraser......the chair color bothered you so i really don't think it's neccessary to see what the original was like.....it's your image and that's what counts.....

again, she's adorable.....

peeper

[wannabehorsephotographer]

Thanks for the critiques! I agree I need to practice a lot more with the post processing.

nDre, what exactly did you do with the picture? I like it.

[nDre]

I only tweaked a little bit the levels and curves.
The idea was to brighten the photo a bit and make it more saturated.

I did it in GIMP, but I believe you could do it in any other decent image editing software.

Glad you like it tho :D

[DEBBIE BROCK]

Beautiful.....I love the expression on her face!! :):)

[wannabehorsephotographer]

nDre, thanks for the followup. I tried bumping the saturation originally, but I thought it made her look too red. I just now found where curves was on PSE - haven't had it very long - still a lot to learn. I think the combo with minor tweaks looks more natural.

& Debbie, thanks!

[nDre]

yeah I agree.. It's always easy to over do it when you edit your photo.
The main thing to remember is just to do it subtly.

I'm also a beginner in photo editing so I think my work also needs more tweaking :p

But, yea.. everyone got different taste. Just keep on doing it and you'll discover your own style after a while :D