Railroad Cheerleader

[NormanRC51]

I went out and took some portraits the other day. I am still in the learning process and still learning to shoot on the "Creative" modes on the camera. here is a shot with her on the railroad track. I wanted a little perspective with the railroad track behind her but didn't want it to overwhelm the picture.I did a black and white on the background and left her color. My question is the shadows on her face, i kind of like, but does that distract from the photo. Any other input would be great.


Thanks



EXIF

Camera Model Canon EOS 30D
F-stop F/11
Exposure time 1/500
ISO speed 250
Focal Lenght 270mm
No Flash

[MrJones]

you can brighten her face a bit and specially her eyes.
the photo is about her and it doesn't feel right when her eyes are dark and shadowed.
just use the dodge tool in photoshop (or any other software) and go over the shadowed areas and then some more over her eyes. not sure if it will fix it completely though.
I like how you got her feet in focus too, good call on the closed aperture.
while I'm not a fan of selective coloring, you actually made it work well
well done!

[SusanH1970]

Agreed about the lighting...a reflector would have helped fill in the shadows; I'm not sure how well post processing would work.

Regarding the pose - her feet are growing out of her head. Rather than positioning her straight-on, I'd have angled her so she was diagonal to the camera, thus lengthening her, avoiding the feet/head issue, and adding some dimension to the photo (also more flattering than straight-on usually is). Being a cheerleader, it also would have shown her uniform.

I'm not a fan of selective coloring at all, but that's subjective so I'll leave it at that.

[NormanRC51]

Thank you for your input. I can see where you are talking about the feet growing from the head and moving to the side a bit. In this shot we weren't going so much for the uniform as we got some other ones with her full uniform. I will post one of those pictures later.

I will try to us the dodge tool in PS and see what i can do with it.


Thank you again!