Good picture but not pop!

[dwmadsen]

I shot a zillion pictures at the local farmers market and while many of the shots were in focus and the exposure more or less correct, I didn't find any images that provided an Aha! moment.

Critique anything you like, but especially ideas on how - or what - to shoot at these type of events. In other words, how do I take a good photo opportunity and capture a great picture?

Nikon D90
f/5.3
ISO 200
75mm
Spot metering
No flash
Overcast day

[Heatcliff]

I'm afraid I don't have any tips for you, but I would like to see what more experienced photographers have to say on this subject. It is a good photograph, but as you said, that special pop is missing. I'm also wondering why that is.

Maybe converting to black and white makes a nice difference?

[Nicole]

IMHO, the reason why it doesn't "pop" to me is because your subject, the woman, is one of the darker parts of the scene. The man behind her is in the lighter area, the lighter area is quite bright, and your eye tends to be drawn to the brightest part of the scene. In shots like this, you could use post-processing to brighten your subject a bit and darken down the bright areas. For the future, well, it's probably more of a light issue. I probably wouldn't want to use flash though, so I'm not quite sure what advice to give you on future shots.

[kencaleno]

first a color boost:

image>adjustments>match color:
luminance 119
color intensity 126

then, a local contrast enhancement:
ctrl+j
filter>sharpen>unsharp mask
amount 10
radius 50
threshold 0
flatten and save

regards, ken

[zona5101]

I think Nicole nailed the shortcomings. Besides or in addition to her suggestion of darking the background you may also want to try 1) bluring the background more 2) desaturating the background (and probably not all the way to b&w as that is a bit overdone).

[edbayani]

your posted photo is a good shot. but i know you're not talking about exposure, color or focus or composition. i think what you need is anticipation and timing. maybe for example waited for the lady to pickup some products and smell them or inspect them? looks like she was posing.
just my thoughts.

[wannabephotographer]

I think a little post processing to get a little more contrast should do it.

[dwmadsen]

Nicole, the light/dark aspect is a good point that I will have to remember the next time I take the camera out of the bag. I tried to darken the background and that just made matters worse! So I did an about face and lightened the background in an attempt to make the lady in the foreground more pronounced. The changes are at http://www.flickr.com/photos/dwmadsen/430799

[dwmadsen]

Ken, a lot of great advice...now if I only knew what to do with it. It seems that Image>adjustments is not available within plain old Elements 7...maybe it is a RAW thingie. I haven't gotten into shooting/editing RAW images...maybe tomorrow. I made the other changes and posted the result at Lady picking veggies-1 on Flickr - Photo Sharing!
Thank you so much for your advice.

Dave

[dwmadsen]

Your comment was shared by others. I tweaked this and pushed that around and came up with Lady picking veggies-1 on Flickr - Photo Sharing!

Thanks for your comment and suggestion.
Dave