picture of my son and his dog, whats with the colors?

[stephanie lyn]

Exif data
Camera Canon EOS REBEL T2i
Exposure 0.025 sec (1/40)
Aperture f/4.5
Focal Length 32 mm
ISO Speed 200
Exposure Bias 0 EV
Flash Off, Did not fire


Just got this camera, so im still trying to learn the settings. Ive gotten really great portraits, but this time around im not sure what i did wrong. the color of the blanket is awful, and he looks washed out, i tried editing it but i drove myself crazy playing around with all the tools and after a while i didnt know what looked good. The lighting equipment i have is just two 85watt bulbs that came with the set i got for christmas last year. Some days they dont seem bright enough and somedays it seems they are too bright and some days i can get perfect shots. am i positioning the lights wrong? are my camera settings the reason the colors are dull?

[JFSanders]

Looks like you overexposed him. Did you look at your exposure meter to see if it was positive or on zero? When you are looking through the viewfinder it should be down at the bottom somewhere (sorry not a Canon user). It will tell you if the image is over or underexposed before you fire.

The bad part is that your son is out of focus but the dog is in focus. This was caused by the shallow DOF at f/4.5 and that you or your camera focused on the dog.

[Doug Sundseth]

Your white balance looks fairly blue to me, which can be fixed in camera or in post. I agree about the focus issues.

For me, at least, I'm seeing overexposure as well. I don't think you're more than a stop overexposed, so it should be well within the fixable range if you shot in RAW. But I'm also seeing very flat light. The result is that the dynamic range of the photo, especially in the critical skin areas, is very narrow, which looks bland. If you were to add a directional light from one side or the other, you would start to see more shape and contrast. In post you can play with the exposure curve to increase skin contrast or mid-tone contrast in general, which might help. You'll need to watch out so that you don't lose detail in the dog, though.

Composition works pretty well, but I'd try to get a shot where the background texture isn't so prominent (or where it's more prominent, perhaps). The variation in color in the background looks like you're using a mixture of lights with different color temperatures. This can work if you're going for a particular effect, but if you're not doing it for effect it makes your life much harder.