Indoor portrait help

[gstettner]

What suggestions do you have for this shot? It was shot indoors with just the light coming in the window. Obviously, I should have removed the lenses from his glasses--any one want to take a crack at removing the glare? Also, do you have any suggestions for making indoor portraits more interesting? We weren't interested in much more than our son and the wall.

Feel free to manipulate/edit the photo.

[Merlyn]

My shot at removing the glare.

A different cropping of the photo would help. I would have maybe cropped a little more to the right to bring the rest of his shoulders into the photo and to center him into the picture. This breaks the "Rule of Thirds" law, but it looks like your intent was to see his whole face in the frame. The sun light looks to be shining from the left, maybe facing or turning Aidan a little more to the right would have taken care of the glare on the glasses. I think the lighting looks good. A larger file size would have made removing the glare a little easier.
I sure others in the forum can give you a better critique then myself.
Nice shot with good intent.

[gstettner]

Thanks, Merlyn. With respect to larger file size, I am limited to a ~20kb file, right?

[Benji]

Originally Posted by gstettner

What suggestions do you have for this shot? It was shot indoors with just the light coming in the window. Obviously, I should have removed the lenses from his glasses--any one want to take a crack at removing the glare? Also, do you have any suggestions for making indoor portraits more interesting? We weren't interested in much more than our son and the wall.

Feel free to manipulate/edit the photo.

When confronted with eyeglass glare like this, simply take one shot without his eyeglasses on and then later in Photoshop place these "good" eyes into your favorite image. In addition to getting rid of the reflections of the light sources this will also get rid of the distortion in his eyes caused by refraction of the lenses.

The lighting in your image is quite nice. Since this is your son, the next time he is on the phone, or watching TV or just doing nothing observe how he naturally "poses" himself. When you see something you like, make a mental note of it and the next time have him do that exact pose.

In portraits the face is usually centered left to right, and the eyes are usually about 1/3rd of the way down from the top of the frame. In your image his eyes are nearly centered top to bottom and his face is closer to the right side of the frame. Also it appears he was hugging his legs and his knees are protruding into the frame at the bottom which is distracting (IMHO.)

Keep it up!

Benji

P.S. I have written several free tutorials on portraiture, including how to do a head and shoulders portrait. http://www.photocamel.com/index.php/topic,14989.0.html

[jiminyClickit]

gstettner,

Adding to the treasure chest of info above, I'll say that this photo can be rescued if you're willing to take a few hours. If you don't have a program for editting or haven't tried restoration, there is more that can be done. I went for repair here. If you need more, I'll do that, or tell you all I know to help you do it. Benji's advice works better, though, so unless this is irreplaceable, new shots would be best.