Baptism processing

[jim.neff]

Greetings,

I offered to take pictures at a friend's baptism of their kid. I was actually there with my camera doing pictures of families for the church's directory and offered to take pictures of the ceremony as a last minute thing.

The lighting in this church is horrendous. Mostly lit by CFL bulbs on the ceiling, none of which were in a good place over where the pastor did the ceremony. In addition, natural light from the windows and they had several tungsten bulbs on the walls. Also, the pastor didn't want me any closer than the last row of chairs and with my kit lens of 18-55 on my Nikon D40 this wasn't the best conditions to shoot.

Please provide critique on post processing. I cloned out the music stand and mic, and played with the colors and levels. You can still see the shadow of the stand on the wall and I couldn't get that out without it looking really bad. Please let me know if the color and lighting is ok, and if the music stand shadow is too distracting.

Thanks, Jim



Camera: Nikon D40
Exposure: 0.02 sec (1/50)
Aperture: f/5.6
Focal Length: 55 mm
ISO Speed: 800
Exposure Bias: 0 EV
Flash: No Flash
Exposure Program: Manual

Original:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/neffland/3487407448/

[Trader]

I think you did a good job, especially with what you had to work with. If that shadow on the wall bothers you, you could try just going over it with the Spot Healing Brush Tool. Try working with a brush size of about 100.