Critique/ Tips for My Portrait please :D

[WillaWeintraub]

Hello! I am new to this forum (although I have been trolling for a few days) and my name is Melissa. I was shown this website by a friend who is a member here. This site is very helpful and I thought it would help if I actually joined. I have been trying to take nice 'professional' type pictures of my son who is pretty much brand new. I don't like wasting $100 on portraits if I can do it myself. They are in no way perfect since it's my first time but I tried! Lol Taking pictures of him has made me more interested in taking pictures of other objects, things that I see on an almost daily basis. I hope to become a regular here and get to know you all!

Camera: Fujifilm Finepix s1000
Setting was on auto and SP1

I took these pictures using natural light in his bedroom. One thing I notice is the light is uneven. In some of the other pictures I notice a bluish tint. The sun was not shining directly in the room anymore and I'm assuming this is why they turned out with a tint.

[photofe804]

Hello Melissa, and welcome! I have also joined this forum recently and am quite excited. Like you, I am more of an enthusiast than a professional, but thought I could share what little experience I've accumulated so far.

The bluish tint you see is not a due to the position of the light, but rather the white balance settings on your camera. As you take each photo, if your white balance is set to auto your camera attempts to identify the type of light being used (sunlight, halogen bulb, etc.) and compensate for the different colors of light being emitted by different light sources. If the camera "gets it wrong" photos may end up with a bluish tint, an orange tint, etc. The solution is to manually set the appropriate white balance setting before shooting. You can try the different settings and see what best matches what you see with the naked eye. In the case of the bluish tint, you may try "sunlight" or "natural light" for warmer coloring. I also noticed that in some pictures the baby's skin looked a little more pink while in others it had a warmer tone. Those differences can also be resolved through your white balance settings. Fortunately you have a beautiful baby, which should give you plenty of opportunities to keep taking pictures and have those settings down in no time!

[LoveDSLR]

It is a common problem if you don't set the white balance and/or exposure properly. You can try fixing it with post processing. The sample here is for illustration purposes.

[WillaWeintraub]

Thanks guys! I'm still learning about my camera (I've had it for over a year and just now decided to try taking nice pictures) so i'll have to figure out where the white balance is. I can't believe what a difference that makes!

What is it exactly that you used on the photo to fix it?

Photofe, thanks for the compliment. He is a beautiful little boy and really does give me plnty opportunity to take pictures, lol

[WillaWeintraub]

Oh i'm so sorry! I didn't realize I posted in the wrong forum! Thank you for moving it... Darn newbys.

[Sime]

Hi Melissa, Welcome.

It looks like your camera was using "tungsten" white balance - what I use is a product called Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2 - you can use many products from a free piece of software called "Gimp" to Photoshop and a dozen others in between... I use Lightroom because it helps me catalogue my images as well as digitally process / develop them.

You can get a trial copy here

[WillaWeintraub]

Thank you Sime! I just got home (very busy day today) and decided to try the white balance on my camera with Aperture. I took several different pictures of the same thing and I found the custom to be the best balance. I'm excited to take more pictures of my son tomorrow morning when he wakes up! If you all don't mind I will re-post the new pictures here with the correct settings!

[Sime]

go for it!

When you say custom, does it ask you to set the white balance based on the white in your image?

Sime

[WillaWeintraub]

Yes that's what it does. I took some pictures today but by the time I was able to the sunlight was over the house and not really coming through the window any longer so i'll have to try again tomorrow. Hopefully i'll get some good ones!