He wasn't into being photographed

[ginmarada]

Please let me know if there is anything I could have done to make this picture better. I am a fairly new photographer and I'm looking to improve in any an every way possible

Camera Canon EOS REBEL T1i
Exposure 0.017 sec (1/60)
Aperture f/4.5
Focal Length 27 mm
ISO Speed 200
Exposure Bias 0 EV
Flash Off, Did not fire
X-Resolution 72 dpi
Y-Resolution 72 dpi
Orientation Horizontal (normal)
Software Aperture 3.1.2
Date and Time (Modified) 2011:07:09 15:20:34
White Point 0.313
Primary Chromaticities 0.64
Exposure Program Manual
Date and Time (Original) 2011:07:09 15:20:34
Date and Time (Digitized) 2011:07:09 15:20:34
Metering Mode Multi-segment
Sub Sec Time 92
Sub Sec Time Original 92
Sub Sec Time Digitized 92
Color Space Uncalibrated
Focal Plane X-Resolution 5315.435897 dpi
Focal Plane Y-Resolution 5342.326923 dpi
Custom Rendered Normal
Exposure Mode Manual
White Balance Manual
Scene Capture Type Standard
Gamma 2.2

[scootermcq]

I think that's the best picture of Gollum I have seen yet.

Kidding aside, your lighting is nice. I am on a crappy work monitor, but it might be a little warm (yellow) and could be cooled a bit, but I would need to be on a better system to be sure.

I would probably crop it down to kill some of the negative space above his head.

Also, the focus is just slightly soft. I don't know if it is camera shake or he moved. Probably the latter, because your shutter speed is fast enough to hand hold. It is not that bad and could easily be sharpened in post to remove the softness.

Besides his look of utter torture it is a nice image.

[yulchick]

hehe, the expresion is priceless :P

I would fix the backround making it all solid black..i see lighter spots of the blanket that was used for the backround..kinda distructing.. and yes it would an awesome shot if it was a bit sharper..still cute tho

[ginmarada]

Thanks for the input guys. I will mess around with some post process sharpening. I've been having a hard time getting the color and saturation just right with my mac.

[Niresangwa]

this amazing expression (fantastic catch lights) makes up for the oversaturated skin and soft focus... makes up for it by a mile. I appreciate the negative space above him, and for the sake of fixing the fluff on the black BG, this really is a great shot... it would probably work really well as a black and white... which would fix your skin tone issue.

Nice job.

[scootermcq]

I hope you don't mind, it is just such a captivating shot that I thought I would see what it looks like with a 2 minute tweak just to exemplify what I had suggested. I will delete this if you are offended, and of course it will be deleted off my machine as soon as I post.

I correct skin tone in curves
Isolated and sharpened eyes
Burned background
Applied a highpass filter to the whole image
cropped

[SusanH1970]

I absolutely LOVE this photograph! If I were the mom, this would be a huge print for me.

I had a couple of plays too, and as Scott said, if you'd rather I didn't, I'll delete them.

For the color version, I opened it in ACR and brought the exposure down just a touch - there were a few hot spots. I cooled the temp down also. In CS2 I did a color balance layer and tweaked shadows, highlights and midtones by adding cyan and blue to counteract the reds and yellows that remained after the WB tweak in ACR. I cropped and slightly sharpened the image. The reds and yellows are still kind of there, but working with a small file size was a bit limiting.

Agreed that this would make a wonderful BW conversion. The light you have here is lovely, lots of depth. For the first BW, I just did a simple gradient map. For the warmer, chocolate version, I just added another color balance layer on top of the gradient map and added in a bit of yellow and red.

[scootermcq]

Nice edits Susan.... I bow to your enhancements of this lovely image. For me, the color still wins

[SusanH1970]

Originally Posted by scootermcq

Nice edits Susan.... I bow to your enhancements of this lovely image. For me, the color still wins

LOL, thanks Scott! I keep coming back to look at this. That face is just priceless.

[ginmarada]

I'm take no offense to any edits, actually I'm not so great with the editing part so just seeing what others would have done is helping to build my knowledge on what I can do with an image. I really like Susan's chocolate version. Thanks again guys!!