Comments and critiques on a photo please

[Lazarus52980]

I'm still pretty "raw" (Get it?) when it comes to photography and I am mostly looking to take great photos of my children. I took a photo last night and did some editing in lightroom last night. I would appreciate any advice on how I could have done better with this shot, either in camera or post processing.

Thank you in advance!

Due to the odd artifacting, here is a direct link to the photo on my onedrive account: http://1drv.ms/1EXg5eA

 

[Berliner]

The image is quite pleasant, I like the light and the kids expression.

Your editing seems to have introduced very weird artifacts: take a close look at the eyes and teeth.

Immediate improvements would be to exclude the person on the right from the frame and perhaps stop down a bit more, overall the image is pretty soft.

 

[Lazarus52980]

The image is quite pleasant, I like the light and the kids expression.

Your editing seems to have introduced very weird artifacts: take a close look at the eyes and teeth.

Immediate improvements would be to exclude the person on the right from the frame and perhaps stop down a bit more, overall the image is pretty soft.

I noticed the artifacting too, but only when I posted here...Might be a photobucket thing.

Thank you for the advice on stopping it down. I shot it at F4, but you think I needed to take it at more like F2.8?

 

[tdawg]

I really like this image. Only downside is the person behind your son. I'd try to increase the contrast in the face a little bit if possible, but overall the backlighting really works.

 

[Lazarus52980]

I really like this image. Only downside is the person behind your son. I'd try to increase the contrast in the face a little bit if possible, but overall the backlighting really works.

If it matters the person "behind" him is holding him so that I could get a shot (he moves around a lot). That said, I'm sure someone more skilled in photoshop could remove her. The best I could do was to make the bright blue shirt a little less distracting.

By contrast do you mean that I smoothed out the skin too much in his face, or do you mean I need to highlight the shadows more?

 

[tdawg]

By contrast i mean to try to increase the contrasr between the face and the brightness of the background. I would play with the tone curves to see if you can make the face a little less washed out. Other than that, its a very nice image.

 

[Lazarus52980]

By contrast i mean to try to increase the contrasr between the face and the brightness of the background. I would play with the tone curves to see if you can make the face a little less washed out. Other than that, its a very nice image.

I'll work on that when I get home today. Thank you for the advice.

 

[jtvang125]

I noticed the artifacting too, but only when I posted here...Might be a photobucket thing.

Thank you for the advice on stopping it down. I shot it at F4, but you think I needed to take it at more like F2.8?

Usually the term "stopping down" means to increase your aperture number to achieve the lens's optimal sharpness. But I see it's already at f4 so the softness is most likely due to the post processing. The details in the hair is quite sharp.

 

[slashbinslashbash]

No, the softness is due to larger aperture giving an extremely narrow depth of field. The eyes are in focus but the bridge of the nose and the front part of the hair are not. I mean that's like less than 1" DOF. I would step down to f/8 or so to get more of the face in focus.

In general it's OK if the ears are OOF, but you want to try to establish sufficient DOF for all facial features to be in focus. (Nose, cheeks, eyes, mouth -- eyes will be most noticeable if they are out of focus) You can do this by any of these methods, or a combination of them:

1) Stopping down the lens (i.e. f/4 to f/5.6 or f/8)
2) Lowering the focal length of the lens (i.e. "zooming out" from 100mm to 75mm or whatever)
3) Attaining greater distance from the subject

 

[yhelothar]

That's a very nice photo of Tommy.
I like how you had him facing away from the sun so it lights up his hair giving him a nice angelic look and providing even lighting that's free of shadows on his face at the same time.
It looks like you also lightened up his face, perhaps with a dodge tool. The contrast is noticeably diminished, but it adds an artistic haze/flare effect. The artifacts shouldn't be noticeable when sized down to fit on a monitor.

You did a good job with the telephoto shot. It adequately produce a soft smooth background that's free of distractions. You framed it slightly off center which makes for a more interesting composition.

The only critique I would give is the haze you added, you went from bottom up. The contrast is the lowest on the bottom of the photo and maximal at his hair. In natural situations, the haze would start closest to the source of light, which is above his head, and fade out as you get further away from it. So I would reverse that haze. The way I do the haze is I like to use the gradient tool and set the blending mode to screen, opacity to 3-5%. Set the gradient to go from white to transparent. That should give you a nice natural haze that looks like it came from the sunlight.

 

[schmuckley]

Looks like it belongs in a store-bought picture frame to me.

 

[Lazarus52980]

That's a very nice photo of Tommy.
I like how you had him facing away from the sun so it lights up his hair giving him a nice angelic look and providing even lighting that's free of shadows on his face at the same time.
It looks like you also lightened up his face, perhaps with a dodge tool. The contrast is noticeably diminished, but it adds an artistic haze/flare effect. The artifacts shouldn't be noticeable when sized down to fit on a monitor.

You did a good job with the telephoto shot. It adequately produce a soft smooth background that's free of distractions. You framed it slightly off center which makes for a more interesting composition.

The only critique I would give is the haze you added, you went from bottom up. The contrast is the lowest on the bottom of the photo and maximal at his hair. In natural situations, the haze would start closest to the source of light, which is above his head, and fade out as you get further away from it. So I would reverse that haze. The way I do the haze is I like to use the gradient tool and set the blending mode to screen, opacity to 3-5%. Set the gradient to go from white to transparent. That should give you a nice natural haze that looks like it came from the sunlight.

Alright, I'll give that a try when I get home today and see if I can improve it. Thank you for the advice!

 

[Syborg1211]

Great shot, but I would recommend dialing back the eye and teeth work. To me he looks to have alien/glass eyes and unnaturally bright/white teeth.

A general rule of thumb when approaching retouching is to take your retouchs to your happy point and then dial the opacity down on them at the very end. This is because you've been staring at the same picture for so long everything looks normal to you, but in the end, good retouching is something that shouldn't be noticeable.

What tool did you use for the eyes and teeth? For eyes, it's much more natural to increase contrast or boost highlights, but it looks kind of like you just boosted the overall exposure, losing a lot of the dark detail. I can't make out the pupils at all even at 100% zoom. For the teeth, you can use hue/saturation and either adjust the hue or lower the saturation on the yellows, achieving a more neutral colored tooth without increasing the brightness of the teeth.