A day at the beach

[greghaynes]

Went to the boardwalk in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware over the weekend and picked out some captures that I thought were keepers. Looking for some CC. I believe having a nice flash would of helped with most of these.

Canon 60D | 50mm f/1.8 II
@ 1/80 sec | f/2.2 | iso 1600 | no flash fired

Loving some Dolle's Popcorn by greghaynes, on Flickr

[shauncunninghamphoto]

Great shot man. Love the "moment." You are more likely to get a response if you ask for specific critique, otherwise you're better off just posting in SYS.

That said, here's a few comments from me:-

• Well composed shot. Keeping the wood planks on the back of the bench straight was important as was the positioning of them in the overall composition.
• The wide aperture gives a nice shallow depth of field which is important to keep the attention on your subject
• The off-center positioning of your subject and his eyes being on the intersection of the RoT grid is perfect placement (in my opinion).
• The expression of the boy is great. It creates intrigue. He has that "should I eat another one or not" look on his face. Nice catch.
• Color tone is good, but not great. It's certainly natural but lacks a little pop. Adding some fill light in PP and perhaps saturating his teeshirt may give it that pop.
• The fact that you chose an ISO1600 for this shot is intriguing to me. Was there a specific reason for such a high ISO? It looks like a shot taken during the day or at least with some ambient light (judging by the catch lights in his eyes). If this is the case, a lower ISO may have given you a sharper image. There's certainly some noise artifacts in the background blur. Nevertheless, this is also something you could remove in PP using noise reduction.

Overall, it's a great shot!

Shaun
Home - Shaun Cunningham Photography

[greghaynes]

Shaun, thanks for the comments. I agree about the lack of pop. I'm going to go back and try playing with the fill light and saturation and seeing what I can come up with. The reason for the ISO1600 was this shot was taken at night around 9pm and he was sitting on a bench along side the boardwalk shops. So the only lighting I had was coming from the store lights. Reducing the ISO would make my shutter speed be way too low.