Family portrait

[bigwater]

This is a family portrait I took of some friends I ran into at the park one day. It wasn't set-up they just happened to be sitting near by when I was walking past with my kids. I took two quick photos which I needed because the kid of course wasn't looking when everyone else was. At home I stacked the images (Photoshop CS5) with the one I liked best on top, then I masked out the kids face revealing his face from the image below. The woman's face was very intense and took quite bit of work to get it to relax basically by masking in curves adjustments to lighten up her expression.
I had a small problem with the man in the shot, you could see right up his shorts (not something you want to hang on the wall) so I used a combination of the puppet warp and free transform with the 'warp' command enabled to cover the area. I also added shadow to his and her legs so as to not draw attention to the area.
The tree in the background I took a bit of a chance and copied the right side flipped it horizontally and pasted it into the left creating a very nice background for the image. I also used the gradient tool to mask in a levels adjustment creating the illusion of light hitting the tree from the left side, and selected the dog and copied it back on top of the tree (magnetic lasso).
I used a standard "high pass" filter to sharpen the eyes and an inverted high pass to soften the skin as well as a slight gaussian blur to soften the background.

[bigwater]

The shot was taken with a Canon 500D -EF-S 55-250 kit lens at 55mm with cpl filter.
f5.6
1/30
400 ISO
Flash fired with -1 stop exposure comp.

[John Hendry]

Hi

A lot of work on this image and it all looks good, You just need to take a bit more control when taking the image A couple of quick directions would have improved the image. the phohe could have been put down.

also this is a flash image there should have been lots os nice avalable side light so flash could have been switched off.

all the best

[rosserx]

I was going to say the same thing about the phone too. Also, the tip of the dog's tail looks disconnected from the dog like someone cut it off and its just sitting there in the grass! a little clone work will take care of that I'm sure...

[bigwater]

Thanks for the responses I never really gave to much thought to the phone I was just at the park taking pics of my kids and ran into some friends but the phone is a definite give-away that this is not a professional photograph.

[sweetdani]

for me this shot is good it is show us very happy family concept is very nice, lovely but u can take this shot much better again this is not a a bad shot lovely

[kisi]

great shot...you captured the happiness of the family...but you may have also captured something else (maybe next time keep an eye one where the males legs are situated...lol)