My Little Man

[greenroomsessions]

I did not do any post processing with this image. Do the colors look ok? Is the background not very good? Should I have cropped it? I am new to photography and I am only looking to get better so any help to make this better pre or post production is very appreciated.

Exif Data
35mm
f/5.6
1/160 sec.
ISO-400
Metering Mode: Pattern
Exposure Compensation: 0 step
Flash Mode: No Flash

[MrJones]

the colors seems fine to me, the skin tone is natural.
the background is very distracting, I think blurring it some more would have helped.
also, composition wise, I think taking your object more to the left of the photo would have been much better (rules of thirds).

[shauncunninghamphoto]

Hi

Nice shot and your little man is very cute. Suggestions for improvement:-

Depth of Field: I agree with MrJones regarding the background. Subjects stand out in portraiture when there is a contrast between the sharpness of the subject and background blur. During the shot, you could've achieved a more shallow depth of field (and thus background blur) by lowering your f-stop, creating a larger gap between the subject and the background and/or getting closer to your son. Any or all three of these things would've created more background blur and resulting in greater attention to your son. You did not provide any information on the camera or lens you used so I cannot make any recommendations in that respect.

Composition: I also agree with MrJones here. While rules (such as RoT) are there to be broken - and often lead to exciting shots when they are, in this case, the focal point is uneasy on the eyes. Your son's smile and his eyes are the main draw in this shot yet if you apply a rule of thirds grid over the shot, both his eyes and smile fall into the center box which isn't good. (If you don't know what a RoT grid is, choose the crop tool in most PP tools and it will apply a grid over the photo. If you don't have a PP tool that does this for you, just imagine a grid intersecting at thirds: so, a horizontal line across the photo a third and two thirds the way up and from top to bottom vertically on the photo a third and two thirds across it. I agree with MrJones' cropping recommendation. I would recrop so that your son's head is in the upper third horizontal and middle of the upper left third vertical. He eyes would then be at the crossover point between the horizontal and vertical in the upper left. This would bring direct attention to his bright blue eyes and his white teeth.

While I would be surprised if anyone disagrees with my suggestions above, my next suggestion below is based on personal taste and does not comply with any rules:-

Post Processing:: Colors look fine and skin tone is natural. Very little tweeking is required in my opinion. However, I would be looking to make minor adjustments to blacks, highlights and vibrance to make the image "pop." His teeshirt is a little bright to me I would imagine a histogram would show a highlight peak so you might want to consider backing it off a little, although careful tweeking is necessary here as the brightness of his teeshirt is creating a nice light reflection on his left cheek. Finally, I would subtley adjust his eyes (in Lightroom I would use the iris enhancement brush). I would marginally increase iris exposure and possibly brightness to make his eyes really pop.

This shot would also look great in B&W. If I have your permission, I will download and try to adjust following my recommendations and post back to you so that my suggestions come to life.

Hope this helps.
Shaun

Home - Shaun Cunningham Photography

[greenroomsessions]

Thank you MrJones and Shaun for your input. I kinda figured that background needed to be blurred a little more. I know that I need to keep in mind the rule of thirds but I still am learning about the rule so your input is greatly appreciated and will hopefully help me get it correct the next time.

@Shaun - you are more than welcome to download and touch up the photo. I will do the same and post my version. Thank you for all your input and I am looking forward to seeing what the picture looks like after PP.

[sgeary]

I love the photo...

1. I disagree with the other two about composition however I think with cropping it you can acheive a great compostion..Now this is just my humble opinion but because his eyes are looking off to his left our right I would crop the left side of the photo out and put him on the very left edge getting the effect of him looking off into the negative space of the right side of the photo.

1. I do agree with them about the DOF if you coul dhave blurred it would have been better..you know you can do this in post processing or get a tight crop like above so you onl;y see the background in the negative space which to me would not be bad...

play with it see what you think!

[greenroomsessions]

Thanks sgeary. I will play with this.

@shauncunningham - I am using a Nikon D40X with the lens that came with AF-S Nikkor 18-55 lens.

[shauncunninghamphoto]

Originally Posted by sgeary

I disagree with the other two about composition however I think with cropping it you can acheive a great compostion..Now this is just my humble opinion but because his eyes are looking off to his left our right I would crop the left side of the photo out and put him on the very left edge getting the effect of him looking off into the negative space of the right side of the photo.

@sgeary: Your crop recommendation is the same, not contradictory, to mine and MrJones.' Greenroomsessions mentioned that they were new to photography so I was providing a comprehensive answer by expressing the composition within the context of rule of thirds. My recommendation places her son's head in the top left of the photo with his eyes looking back into the negative space. However, It's more difficult to explain without a photo. I am at work at the moment but when I can get on my Mac, I'll play with it and post an image that brings my recommendation to life. I didn't do this at the time of positing my critique as I don't like downloading photos of other people's children without getting persmission first, which I now have.

I'll post when I can.
Shaun

[shauncunninghamphoto]

Hi again

I have done a quick re-spin of your little man, following my earlier composition suggestion. I have also done some minor light adjustment on the background (it doesn't provide the DoF that we spoke about earlier, nor would it be my recommended PP - I just quickly brushed it in to create a foreground/background contrast).

I would've like to work on color a litte and his eyes, but the source file I had to work with was only a 139kb jpeg so I was seriously restricted! Anyway, was just wanting to bring my composition recommendation to life and I hope you like it. Include a B&W version too. I also confirm that the photo on my Flickr account is set to private and I will delete it whenever you ask me to.

Thank you for posting your photo and for giving me the opportunity to critique it.

Shaun

[greenroomsessions]

@shauncunningham - Thank you for all your work on this. I really like what you did to the color picture, it really pops. I really like the B&W too. I really need to get better at my PP skills.

[JDTurner]

Regarding the crop, cutting the top of his head off ruins the photo, IMO. I would widen the crop just a tad bit to get his head fully in frame. It would be close enough to the RoT.