Memorial Photo

[dbevisjr]

I put this together as a memorial to mark the 1 year date. Of course the family loved the piece and thanked me for putting it together. Mikalah is the youngest of my wifes 9 children. Even though everybody liked the photo I'm still wondering what I could have done to make it look better. If I had thought of it while working on the image I would have used an ellipse instead of a rectangle to pull the face to put into the image. But even with that the image still looks somewhat incomplete. There was going to be a poem on it that was written by Mikalah's cousin but the permission to use the poem came to late for the date that I wanted to post it so I put only the dates on the image. So, am I missing something in the image? TIA.



Camera Nikon D60
Exposure 0.003 sec (1/320)
Aperture f/9.0
Focal Length 18 mm
ISO Speed 100
Exposure Bias 0 EV
Flash No Flash

[Dreadnought]

The concept here is excellent. What I've done in the past with these kinds of images (and this is strictly my point of view as an amateur artist), is to blend the faces into the sky using the luminosity tool in PS. Its a softer representation for a sensitive emotional response. If you like the way this is done, i would agree that you probably want to go with a circular crop of her face (take away the sharp corners) and make the edges a bit softer.

just my humble opinion...if everyone did things my way, there would be no variety or artful expression.

[dbevisjr]

Thanks Dreadnought. Actually I was wondering how to do the blending to soften it a bit so thanks for that tip too. I was thinking earlier today about this. I guess my mental image of what it would look like finished just came up short since I didn't put the poem on it. Even though the author is Mikalah's cousin and my wifes nephew and I know he would give his blessings to put it on the image, I still wanted to get his permission since he is a well known spoken word artist on the northeast coast. He wrote the poem and recited it at Mikalah's viewing. I see you are in NC. I will be visiting family in the Goldsboro area for Thanksgiving weekend next month. We don't get the fall scenery in central Florida so I will be looking for photo worthy scenes while up there. Thanks again for your input.

[xxpinballxx]

A way to do this and keep the face highy visible is to just use a soft erase brush and lightly knock off the edges around the bottom to where the skin blends. are you usuing photoshop?
Once the bottom edges and the side of the shoulders blend it will look much better.
ANother hting I do to make the edges of the top layer cutout seem more natural is when cutting it out I feather the edges about 5 pixels (unless its a very small image to begin with the only a couple pizels)
Doing this takes that sharp edge off of the image. You can also add a drop shadow to that top layer and it looks like shes popping out from the background.

[dbevisjr]

Thanks xxpinballxx. I will keep those ideas in mind for the next project.

[Dreadnought]

Im actually in Goldsboro...lol

Cliffs of the Neuse is a state park around here with rivers and streams...neat little place that might provide that opportunity. I'm sure theres plenty others, I just haven't really gone out exploring yet.

[dbevisjr]

Hey thanks Dreadnought. I will check that park out while up there.