Robs Friend | Whats wrong here?

[Sime]

My Mate Rob has asked what I thought may be wrong with this picture, please if you guys can have a look and shed some light for him.




Sorry - should have said - have a look at the LARGE version to see what he means -> here
Thanks!

Sime

[NaturesPixel]

she is not smiling!!!

nothing you can really do about the setting since they are thousands of feet in the air.. but i think it would be a winner if she was smiling

[xxpinballxx]

isnt that a train?
I think the blown out area bottom right is the only thing thats absolutely killing it.

[NaturesPixel]

lmao a train.. yes .. i need more coffee i took it as a plane.. im going back to bed now...

[Sime]

Hmmm..sorry - should have said, have a look at it big here Sorry!

Sime...

[ELAY]

I thought plane too. Must be a North American thing (at least on my part) -- trains are exotic ways to travel here.

Not sure what you are asking about the photo? On the technical side, the right side of the face is blown out, the whole thing is quite soft (esp when viewed large), and the light coming from low camera right creates an unflattering shadow under the eye. I agree a smile would have been nice, and I tend to like portraits where the subject engages with the camera.

EL

[jiminyClickit]

Visually comparing them side by side is the only way I can get any sense for a change that suits my eyes a little better. The "picnik" edit program on Flickr has a Golden Ratio feature for the crop, a white balance, some lighten/contrast for the shadows and highlights, unsharp mask, some minor things that add up to the above. The original (all 9 minute-download of it) intrigued me, especially when it comes to suggesting she smile. Hurray for some honest expression on her, a look of introspection, some thoughts behind the eyes.

Did Rob think there was something wrong, or is it just a question?

[Bentwing]

Can't add anything that hasn't been said already. I think the biggest problem is the focus and the lighting, or more specifically the shadows on the face. The soft focus maybe what he was trying for.

[Ewie]

I like this shot, makes me wonder what she's looking at??

I felt like the shot needed some attention so I took the liberty of making some changes and re-posting. If that's a problem, please let me know and I'll delete/remove the image.



Now, I'm no Photoshop expert but here's what I did.

I re-composed by cropping a little closer and straightening the image. In Photoshop I added a duplicate layer and converted it to a high pass filter, hard light blend to sharpen things up a little and erased to take in the facial features. Then I duplicated the filter layer and erased further to take in just the eyes at which point I increased the high pass pixel level to further increase sharpness to the eyes.

Lastly I introduced a little vignetting to draw attention more to the face and added vibrance to increase colours ever so slightly.

Being a jpg there is not a lot of tonal information to work with and I'm sure you would get better results using the original RAW file if you have it.

Hope you approve

[A Team]

I think including a little bit more of the neck would help. I start to feel a little bit clastraphobic with the picture cutting her off mid-neck .... especially since it is in a train. Otherwise, I think it is an interesting shot.