Bud at Goshens pass

[tweyland]

This is a picture of my son at Goshens Pass Va. I was wondering what I can do to make it look a little more professional. I am new to this hobby and want to be able to take some good shots of my family.
Focal length 105
iso 200
shutter 1/400
f 5.6
any tips for the next time i go out or post processing are welcome
thanks
Tony

[Aleix]

Hello!

Regarding composition, you cropped/cut limbs, it would look better otherwise.
I would also have probably shot vertical (placing the head to the upper right intersection of the rule of thirds overlay), keeping the whole position of your son. I say probably because it would depend on the rest of his body...


Gray area represents the (cropped?) unknown part of the picture.

If you have an uncropped version, could you please post it?

Greetings

[tweyland]

different picture different focal lenght. I always set the camera to continous shoting it seems i never get the shot right the first time

[Aleix]

Great, that'd be my suggestion as stated above. I would crop not only for making the picture vertical and filling it with your son, but also to leave out any distracting parts. In my opinion, both the uncropped version and the cropped one show likewise to the observer that the context of the portrait is a river scene.

Added some dodging to the face skin, burning of bottom rock, t-shirt and (slightly) hair; however you should also wait for advice from users with more experience at portrait postprocessing...

[irishmuth]

Definitely agree on the crop. The other things (IMO) that keep this photo from standing out are the lack of light on his face and the redness in his skin. In the "after" shot below, I did a shadows adjustment on the whole image and then used a mask to do a highlights adjustment on the bright parts of his arms and legs. I then used another mask to do an exposure adjustment just on the boy and did some additional dodging on his face.Somewhere in between there, I did a selective color adjustment where I lowered magenta in the reds a bit and dropped magenta to completely to zero in the magentas. I think I also adjusted the yellows a bit. Lastly, I did a contrast adjustment on everything except his face using this method.

[Aleix]

Good job there Mike! I find it much better now

[tweyland]

Thank you very much my wife wants that printed and on he wall. I have a copy of photoshop elements 5 i believe, I guess I'm going to have to read this forum and finaly learn how to use the program. I look at the picture now and can't believe i was behind the shutter. I bought my d90 a couple of months ago to replace a d50 to get the most out of my 70X200 f2.8 and have not even really put it on the camera yet. I can't wait to get out and take some more pictures.
Thank you again
Tony