Baby w/ towel shot

[jai325i]

Took alot of work to get my son to stay still on the towels after he woke up. Let me know what you think

Nikon D40
Aperture f4.0
Focal Length 55mm
ISO 200

[graciousness]

Hi Jai

Did you find this shot working better for you now that he's looking at the camera and is now more engaged with the photo? I think it's better Now it's just a matter of finding the right angles and composition....

I think the problem with this shot is that there is too much of the towels on the photo and not enough of him. His hair was cut off, and he's angled a bit too flat on the towel, thus cutting off one of his beautiful big eyes. It's really hard to get him to do the right pose on this being so young and limited in movements so of course, you take what you can get.

Why not have him lie on his side instead of his tummy?

Or, can he look up yet if he is on his tummy and you can take his photo looking up at you whilst on his tummy?

You can also have taken his shot whilst he was sleeping. I think sleeping babies are so angelic.......I can stare at them for hours!

The left side of the wall is darker, which may indicate that he's too close to the wall?

You can crop this photo to panoramic, cutting off most of the towels on the bottom, but then because part of his hair was chopped off, I don't know if it would improve much. give it a try, anyway. Although if you have the original photo and it's more complete, you can recrop that. If not, I think the other option for you is to crop him a lot tighter, filling the frame with his face. Then the part-chopped hair wouldn't be as much of an issue.

Anyhoo, that's all I can advice as I have limited knowledge in the technical matter. I hope I have helped anyway

[dannyrich]

I would be tempted to crop up one towel (measured from bottom left) and come in rougly the same distance from the right. I think coupled with a little bit more brightness would really boost the image.

[jai325i]

Originally Posted by graciousness

Hi Jai

Did you find this shot working better for you now that he's looking at the camera and is now more engaged with the photo? I think it's better Now it's just a matter of finding the right angles and composition....

I think the problem with this shot is that there is too much of the towels on the photo and not enough of him. His hair was cut off, and he's angled a bit too flat on the towel, thus cutting off one of his beautiful big eyes. It's really hard to get him to do the right pose on this being so young and limited in movements so of course, you take what you can get.

Why not have him lie on his side instead of his tummy?

Or, can he look up yet if he is on his tummy and you can take his photo looking up at you whilst on his tummy?

You can also have taken his shot whilst he was sleeping. I think sleeping babies are so angelic.......I can stare at them for hours!

The left side of the wall is darker, which may indicate that he's too close to the wall?

You can crop this photo to panoramic, cutting off most of the towels on the bottom, but then because part of his hair was chopped off, I don't know if it would improve much. give it a try, anyway. Although if you have the original photo and it's more complete, you can recrop that. If not, I think the other option for you is to crop him a lot tighter, filling the frame with his face. Then the part-chopped hair wouldn't be as much of an issue.

Anyhoo, that's all I can advice as I have limited knowledge in the technical matter. I hope I have helped anyway

Thank you very much, you definitely made me look at this photo from a different perspective. i didnt think the cropped hair was that noticeable. thats alot for your insight.

[jai325i]

Originally Posted by dannyrich

I would be tempted to crop up one towel (measured from bottom left) and come in rougly the same distance from the right. I think coupled with a little bit more brightness would really boost the image.

Thanx for the advice. i try it out. i actually thought the image was too bright guess i was wrong. thanx again

[SusanH1970]

My goodness, what a cutie! Would you mind if I had a bit of a play?

[jai325i]

Originally Posted by SusanH1970

My goodness, what a cutie! Would you mind if I had a bit of a play?

Thank you. sure why not

[SusanH1970]

Thanks so much - I just love his expression and thought this shot had so much potential!

Not sure what software you have, but I used Photoshop CS2 along with Adobe Camera RAW.

In ACR, I brought up the exposure just a tad - it seemed just slightly underexposed to me, judging by the greyness of the towels and background.

In CS2, I rotated the photo and cropped it. I just cloned the separation between the towels (not a great cloning job; if I'd taken my time with it it would have been much better). I dodged the background to even it out at about 10% set for highlights. I used a tiny spot healing brush on the pinlights in his eyes from the flash, and to bring out the pretty catchlights I duplicated the layer, lassoed the eyes, new layer via copy, set to screen opacity at 20%, and erased back all of the brightened area but the eyeballs.

I don't normally do this for edits on DPS since few people here have the software, but I also ran it through Imagenomic's Portraiture plug-in at a super-low opacity to even out the skin and lightly smooth the flakiness.

Hope you like it - if not, I'll take it right down. Thanks again for letting me play, this was a fun one to work on!

[jai325i]

Originally Posted by SusanH1970

Thanks so much - I just love his expression and thought this shot had so much potential!

Not sure what software you have, but I used Photoshop CS2 along with Adobe Camera RAW.

In ACR, I brought up the exposure just a tad - it seemed just slightly underexposed to me, judging by the greyness of the towels and background.

In CS2, I rotated the photo and cropped it. I just cloned the separation between the towels (not a great cloning job; if I'd taken my time with it it would have been much better). I dodged the background to even it out at about 10% set for highlights. I used a tiny spot healing brush on the pinlights in his eyes from the flash, and to bring out the pretty catchlights I duplicated the layer, lassoed the eyes, new layer via copy, set to screen opacity at 20%, and erased back all of the brightened area but the eyeballs.

I don't normally do this for edits on DPS since few people here have the software, but I also ran it through Imagenomic's Portraiture plug-in at a super-low opacity to even out the skin and lightly smooth the flakiness.

Hope you like it - if not, I'll take it right down. Thanks again for letting me play, this was a fun one to work on!

Wow i love it. looks great. i just showed his mom and she loves it also. i have CS2 but im still learning how to use it.

[SusanH1970]

So glad you like it! It was a great shot to begin with, just needed a few tweaks to make it even better.