I'd love some input on my photo from yesterday. I didn't have many good choices, and decided to work with this candid photo from my evening with friends, as indoor photography is something I need to work on!
I am a newbie and non-technical so really appreciate your honest advice and opinions.
My intent is to focus on the face and the smile of the woman in white, and as I cropped the photo, I got interested in the shape of the diagonal flash line following the three faces in the background. I converted to black and white to reduce distraction factors and focus on the shapes.
Does it work? What could I do better? I'll post the original too.
Sorry, doesn't work for me. The first thing my eye is drawn to is the bright flash in the background and follows the diagonal line to the person next to that. The foreground person is the third person I notice, followed by the rest of the picture.
If you want the woman in white to stand out, you need to either crop substantially, or else darken and fade the background so that flash is less prominent. People are polarized about the use of selective colouring but that might help here if that's what you want to emphasize. But that bright flash is always going to be the first thing anyone notices: it's the focal point of both pictures.
I like the flash and the front woman, but like Ariel I find the woman on the right distracting. She takes too much focus off the subject. If I put my hand over the right side, I like it much better with her cropped out completely. Then you also get the nice odd number of focus points, which helps the overall composition.
I agree with Ariel and the advice given is good. The flash is distracting but it does create some interesting back-lighting, but one's eye is drawn to the woman on the right and the woman on the left. Best to crop them all out (flash and two extra women) so the eye isn't distracted.
Maybe just darkening the faces of the two women on the edges, or darken and blur a bit so they fade into background?
I love the flash, and use of Black and white.
This is a tough one. I'd start with the color version. (1) Crop closely to the lady. (2) This will leave the flash, which I really don't like, but I'd try to mask that out, pull the exposure way down. You'll be left with posterization on the highlight but it can't be helped. A radial graduated filter would be good to start centered on the flash perhaps and then perhaps a second mask on the whole background. (3) I'd go to her hair and remove the blue casts there. I might even remove them from the flash too. (4) To her face and remove a spot or two and then mask all the skintones and desaturate a little (too red), sharpen a little (features are blurred) and then significantly noise reduce to smooth it all out (a neat trick for portraits especially combined with sharpening). (5) Finally, mask the teeth and whiten, usually a slight increase in exposure will be enough.
No matter what you do it won't be perfect. :( Always better to shoot it accurately to start with. I tried all this myself and it worked OK with the tools of Adobe Camera Raw 8.3 (Lightroom 5.3).
I don't mind the flash that much (always considering the conditions of the picture...). My eye goes from the flash to the woman on the foreground (through the light on her hair), and then to the women on the sides. I wouldn't want to loose the people on the sides, but maybe it's a good idea to decrease attention on them.
I did a quick editing over the black and white version, darkening ("burning") the faces of the woman on the sides, and adding a vignette that I think it goes well with the snapshot grainy quality of the shot. It gives some "lomo" feeling and helps to center attention on the main subject:
I think I'd like it more if the woman on the left and on the right were out of the picture! Either cropped out or edited out some other way. I like the light from behind, though!
I like the emotion that this picture shows, pure happiness and good times. But it is the woman on the left that is distracting to me as she is the only one with a blank expression. I do think something great to point out is the depth this picture shows, it is very dimensional.
@rafesmar thank you for trying that! I like it. @breezers thanks for these comments. I know a big part of why l like this shot (out of many not-really-satisfactory ones) is because of the feeling we all had in the moment. And tho' i was focused on the woman in the foreground, for me all the things happening in back got my attention after the fact.
Thanks everyone!
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If you want the woman in white to stand out, you need to either crop substantially, or else darken and fade the background so that flash is less prominent. People are polarized about the use of selective colouring but that might help here if that's what you want to emphasize. But that bright flash is always going to be the first thing anyone notices: it's the focal point of both pictures.
I love the flash, and use of Black and white.
No matter what you do it won't be perfect. :( Always better to shoot it accurately to start with. I tried all this myself and it worked OK with the tools of Adobe Camera Raw 8.3 (Lightroom 5.3).
I did a quick editing over the black and white version, darkening ("burning") the faces of the woman on the sides, and adding a vignette that I think it goes well with the snapshot grainy quality of the shot. It gives some "lomo" feeling and helps to center attention on the main subject:
@breezers thanks for these comments. I know a big part of why l like this shot (out of many not-really-satisfactory ones) is because of the feeling we all had in the moment. And tho' i was focused on the woman in the foreground, for me all the things happening in back got my attention after the fact.
Thanks everyone!