My beautiful niece and nephews

[Essy]

Exposure: 0.033 sec (1/30)
Aperture: f/2.9
Focal Length: 9.9 mm
ISO Speed: 200
Exposure Bias: 0 EV
Flash: Auto, Fired


I took this one of my niece and nephews on Thanksgiving day. My sister in law likes it and wants to order it. But first I wanted to know if there is anything that I can do to improve it. Anything that stands out? Does it need brightening or darkening. Cropping?

For future reference...how's the composition? I'm not sure I love it...there is like a gap in the middle...should the two boys have stood to one side maybe?

Thanks in advance for looking.

[windrider86]

Sorry to say but the first thing I notice are the strange halos around everything and her eyes are squinted
And yes, I would have the two boys stand closer to each other. Would give them a feeling of closeness as well as hide the background
Did you crop this that close in or was that how you took the photo?

[Essy]

Thank you. As to the 'halos' do you mean the shadows...or is there something else that I'm missing? I blurred the background in post processing so I'm wondering if that's what you are seeing. And yes...I took the picture that close...not much cropping if any. Also as to her eyes...that's mostly their shape, but I suppose when she smiles they squint a little more too. I don't have an opportunity for a do over though. So I'm wondering what the suggestions for improvement at this stage of things would be.

[windrider86]

Are those shadows by each of thier heads and arms? They just look odd to me

[Essy]

Here's another one fresh off the camera...no processing whatsoever. I think I like the composition better and so forth...but will have to remove some stuff from behind the head of my nephew on the left. Still some shadows around the heads though...and play with the colors and brightness a bit.

[windrider86]

Why not just put in a black background? That would take care of the shadow problem as well as the background

[candidrachel]

Actually I prefer the second shot. The shadows don't seem too bad on that one. The first one looks too over processed in my opinion.

[pbdweeeebie]

You captured a nice mood here, but the shots have let you down.

1] as shot, there is a little too much distraction in the backgrounds - be weary of this always or you end up with a fair bit of tricky editing that can be avoided

2] because the lady is sitting and the men are so much taller, this had added to making the composition unbalanced. In the first pic the space between the men - and that light in the background - leaves a void in the middle of the subjects. In the second pic, the arm above the lady's head is not ideal. She is just too low. A stool would have been ideal to have brought her up higher.

3] if you have a variety of light sources in room this may not be giving you the correct white balance. A grey card is simple to use and best when you have such willing subjects. Grab a shot with the card in place, shoot in raw and then correct in edit

4] the dof @ f/2.9 may be a tad shallow for a group shot. Unless you had a tripod, you'd need to up your ISO to have a reasonable hand-held shutter speed. I'd say around f/4 minimum

5] less is more when editing, especially for portraits. Keep an eye on the skin tones when editing and watch the reds carefully. The edited pic is tad too red as far as I can see. And don't always vignette your portraits. It does not work well for this shot.

But as has already been suggested, you could put some quality editing time to these pics and end up with a nice end result. I'd say focus on:

1] exposure and white balance
2] skin tones
3] replacing the background or certainly darkening it
4] modest sharpening and contrast adjustments

pB

[Essy]

Thanks so much for all the feedback. I'm just beginning with all of this, but I could still sense that something was off. As you can see, it's not only my photography that is bad but my post processing leaves alot to be desired also...but even so, I'd still like to try to tackle it because it means alot to my sister in law. Anyway...is there any way of cutting my niece off and then repositioning her a bit higher? The composition is really bothering me (wish I had been this aware of it when I was taking the picture, but live and learn I guess) I don't have photoshop...I mostly use the flicker editing program and I also have Gimp downloaded on my computer but am mostly at a loss on what to do with it. I did try to color the background black using Gimp and I made a mess of it...arghhh.

[Essy]

Ok...is this any better now or did I mess it up worse?