Let It Snow

[mcklynna]

50mm
3.2
1/2000
ISO 320

Any comments/critiques welcome!!!

[Ash Fuehrer]

Very cute photo, but the only things that I see is the blacked out eyes, were they edited that way?

[Sterling]

I think the face is a bit underexposed.

[SusanH1970]

I agree it's underexposed and that there is no light in his eyes. Is this edited or SOOC?

[carlyfan]

I love the expression on his face! Good job capturing that. I don't know why, but the few snow flakes in front of his face (by his mouth and eye) are really distracting me. But maybe that's just me being weird. It does look a little underexposed, and his eyes do look kind of dead, but other than that I like it. Nice composition and nice clean background.

Lisa

[mcklynna]

Thanks for all of your replies! I actually didn't do any editing to the eyes. I did very little editing overall to the picture. I think I added a little fill light and added a slight vignette. His eyes are naturally very dark, he takes after his dad. I didn't use a flash, it was snowing outside and I thought the snow would add enough bounce light to the photo. Can anyone give any suggestions as to how you would have brightened up his face and eyes better? Would you have used a flash, or used post processing?

[newbad]

Very cute capture of your kiddo. I think if you had taken the picture from a different angle you would of gotten more light in his eyes and better exposure of his face. I would lighten up the vingette a lot. I don't feel it works here. You might be able to add more light to his eyes PP, but it's best when you get it right in the camera first. You definitely have room to go down on your shutter speed. This would of increased the exposure.

I actually like the snowflakes. It adds to the story.

[mcklynna]

Oh yeah, I could have adjusted the shutter speed!! Thank you!!! I don't know why I didn't think of that.

[danbaileyphoto]

Actually, I really like the composition, and the angle of view. It's got a nice, simple feel and soft, even light. Yes. it's a little dark on his jacket, but I can live with that if there was one more thing present, which is some catchlight in the eyes. That alone would make a subtle, yet distinct difference in this image.

When you took the shot, you could have either used a very low power flash, low enough so that it didn't throw any light on his face, only into the eyes, use a bounce card on the flash or else rigged up some sort of reflector that would have given you that light.

Now that the shot has already been taken though, you could try and put some catchlight into his eyes in Photoshop- There are simple tutorials on the web about how to do this. Otherwise, really nice image, though!

[NicolaB]

Originally Posted by mcklynna

...... Can anyone give any suggestions as to how you would have brightened up his face and eyes better? Would you have used a flash, or used post processing?

Hi.

+1 on the exposure, catchlights & lessening the vignette.

If your background was still clean, you could have turned him to his left. This would have given you more light - and catchlights (really important to get a special portrait). Failing that, something to reflect the light back into his face which would also have helped with catchlights.
There was room to take your iso possibly to 100 given the shutter speed? That would bring your shutter speed down in av mode.
On my screen the snow looks yellow? Perhaps a slight colour adjustment needed in pp?

Nice composition & a little cutie - he will break a few hearts with those eyes.