Leah in the woods

[Lydiafairy]

This is my first critique here, I looked at a bunch of other folks shots and all of the super helpful hints, I am hoping for a few myself. I am a relative newbie to photography, and a total newbie here at DPS. This shot is sooc, and I forgot my polarizer on the kitchen table. She seems to blend in too much, she does not stand out, would the polarizer have made her pop more? Should I have choose a different dress because this one just was not going to work anyway?


1/40
f3.5
ISO 400
flash with light diffuser (Light sphere)
50mm
nikon d80

Thanks in advance for all the help!

[lputman]

I don't own/use a polarizer so I don't know if it would have made a difference. I really do like this photograph and I think with some creative post processing, it would be an awesome image.

[denja]

I really like this concept, but IMO a much tighter crop would work better. Leave enough of the background to imply being in the woods, but a tighter crop on the subject.

Jim

[A-Lyn20]

I like the image, but I agree, a tighter crop would be better. She almost seems dwarfed by the forest.

[Lydiafairy]

@Iputman- what kind of processing would you do?

@A-Lyn20 and Denja- I think you both are right, Will crop and see if that makes a big difference! THANKS!

[Lydiafairy]

How is this? I cropped in and I saturated just slightly, also I warmed it up a bit
I used Picassa to edit, photoshop is really confusing to me

[WooD]

I hope you don't mind, and if you do I'll remove this edit ASAP.

I used CS2, and did a selective color adjustment. Choose white, and added cyan, and a touch of magenta to make the sky blue.

Then I dupped the layer ,and converted it to screen mode, and erased everything out except her. This left the background as is, but added a lot more light on her.

You could crop it some, but I really like it the way you have it now.

Checked out your Flicker, and really love your image titled Leah in Pink #1

[Lydiafairy]

WooD- Thanks!!! She does stand out more, and we were having one of those white/gray sky days. I think she blends in to the lightest part of sky above her a bit too much... the blue helps with that. ;-)

[denja]

Personally, I think if you combined your crop with WooD's color and luminosity edits, it would be a great image!

Jim

[laura.wilkerson1333]

I really like the crop.

One of my favorite things to do on Photoshop (sadly, I never use this, as I am a purist and don't PP my photos) is to change the photo to sepia tone on a new layer, then change the blending mode of the sepia layer to Overlay. I think she would stand out more if you did that...