Curly Q

[eerick76]

I recently took my sister and her family's pictures, I'm happy with how they turned and this is my favorite shot by far! My niece has curly blonde hair and bright blue eyes, I think it looks better in B&W. What I would like is some C&C, I'm always looking to improve. TFL!

Camera - Canon 60D, Canon 28-135 mm lens
Shutter - 1/80 sec
Aperture- f/ 5.6
ISO - 160
Speedlite used

[graciousness]

Hi there,

What a cutie

This is a nice shot, and good use of DOF on the background.

The issue, though, is that the focus was on the tree. You can see the tree is sharper than her face. You needed your focus on her eyes as that is the most important aspect in portraiture.

I think there is too much tree trunk and this would have been better if taken in portrait orientation instead of landscape.

The B&W conversion is a little too gray, I find. I also think that the colour would be better so that we can see the contrasts and brighten up that beautiful child's world.

What I would do to fix this photo is to crop it so that there's less tree. Then with post processing, sharpen around her eye area. If you still want this in monochrome, add contrast and bring out more blacks to the image. Would love to see the colour version of this though......

Cheers and I hope this helps!

Grace

[eerick76]

Thank you so much for your advice. I did what you suggested and it does look much better! The reason I chose B&W is because of the color of her shirt seemed a bit distracting to me, she has beautiful blue eyes so it was a hard decision. I edited the color version as well.

[Nakedeye]

First let me say I am new to this forum and learning my way around.

I agree with you that the dress may have been distracting. I do like the improvements by cropping part of the trunk away. I also prefer the BW.

[Sweetlifephoto]

Emily I think the new crop looks really good and while I generally prefer B&W but for this one I prefer the color, her blue eyes really pop on that rendering. Also I would bring down those bright areas in her hair. Those hot spots pull the eye away from the face where you want the attention to be.

[danbaileyphoto]

I think you've got a nice tight composition here, nice light and a good exposure, even nice catchlights. Also, like the halo/rim lighting from the back.

What it's lacking, though, is depth and dynamic quality. The light is soft, but it's not really doing anything to really bring out the three dimensionality of your subject.

Some kind of reflector, or even just a single diffused flash placed off to the side on a sync cord would make a huge difference here. It would take this shot from good to REALLY good.

I talk about this stuff in my new eBook, Going Fast With Light. Look for the link in my signature. There's a lot you can do even with one inexpensive flash, a small softbox and a sync cord, and that stuff won't slow you down once you get comfortable with your skills and the gear.