My get pushed challenge from Sylvia @sdutoit this week was "a people photograph, the twins maybe". Monday morning before I had to sadly leave to come home, we were all sitting on the front porch enjoying our time together. The babies were having an absolute blast in the swing with Mommy! I love that I was able to capture the expressions I got of all of them!
As I was flipping thru all the photos that I captured of these moments, I was thinking of what a fantastic collage they would make framed, on Mommy's wall. She loves to hang photos on her wall! For her birthday present, my thought was to frame a bunch of her favorites from the thousands (literally! thanks dslr, memory cards, and external hard drives!). But here I am, 16 months after their birth, and I STILL do not take good people photos. Either they don't turn out well (I've finally figured out and accepted that I need to use the short lens with the wide aperture to capture the low light), or I simply don't know how to process portraits - meaning I don't know how to judge what's "correct". And it's not that I don't know which of those two is the problem. I do know. On each photo, I know which of those two options is the problem, and many times it's both problems at the same time. It took me nearly an hour to process this photo and get it to something that I thought was acceptable, but is it "correct"? And, obviously, I can't spend an hour processing every photo!
I need help!!! And no, there are no portrait classes to take out here where I live. The good news is, I've found a camera club about an hour down the road that has Special Interest Groups, and one of the groups is Portrait Photography. I'll be joining that club in September when they start their new season after their summer break. In the meantime, PLEASE CC!!!!
I hope you don't mind if I comment because you asked in two places. Plus, I take thousands of pics of my own twins too. I know how hard it is (believe me I really do!). I see you use an ISO of 2000, but you're outside, so if you used a wider aperture, you could lower the ISO. Plus, you could focus on the people and blur out the background that way. If the swing isn't moving, the speed could be less that 1/500 sec, which would let in more light too.
What program do you use for editing? What did you find yourself doing when you edited this pic (what bothers you?)?
I don't think there is really anything "correct" or not because it's what matters to you with a photo. The expressions on all 3 is great in your photo!
If it were me, I'd try to get more light and focus on the subjects, and less on the edges/background if that makes sense?
P.S. If they were in motion swinging towards you and away, that is a very difficult situation to get in focus. I spent days and a whole lot of discarded images to get one of my daughter on a swing. It also required a change in setting for the focus, which I'd be happy to share with you if you'd like.
Haven't they grown. I am sure that whichever photos you put together of the twins, their Mum will think they are a wonderful gift. I agree with Tracy though the ISO of 2000 is far too high for this type of shot.
If you think I could help out in a mentor way, please let me know. Do you have an editor and use it? For good people portraits, those you'd print and frame, it is practically a necessity.
This shot works very nicely. It might work even nicer if you could shoot with a much wider aperture than f/11, say at least f/5.6, whatever will get the subjects in complete focus, but yet blur the background some. It would work even nicer if the distance from you to the subjects was less than the distance from the subjects to the background. This gives a background blur effect too, separate from the aperture of the lens. The techie term is the "hyperfocal distance" effect, and you can Google that if you'd like to know more.
looks as if you are getting lots of help here and I',m not a portrait photographer!. What I notice is mom's legs are cut off at an unattractive place and the two sweet faces are a bit soft
This is a lovely warm shot. They are getting so big. It is tough to 'do' people but shoot and then shoot lots more. Try taking a subject who is patient, play around with white balance, change the balance for each new shot- then do the same with aperture and then ISO. But play around and maybe try youtube, you never know.
@shesnapped If you would not mind, I can just comment and suggest - I'll critique kindly of course - in comments to various shots. I have followed you so you'll be in my 365 feed.
If you would rather, we can do it via email. hymus@optonline.net
@frankhymus That's a fantastic idea! I SO appreciate it! And it's awesome that you're willing to jump right in! If you'll bear with me, my youngest son's Eagle Scout ceremony is next weekend, the 22nd, and there is so much to get done between now and then that I'll be still be scarce around here. But I'll have a ton of photos from that weekend, so we'll definitely have material to work with! Would it be ok to start then?
@jgpittenger Thank you for your comments! Yes, their faces got soft when I used a preset from On1 to add a warm glow. Couldn't remove the blur without masking out the glow. Ugh!
What would have been the proper crop for mom's legs?
@tracys@onewing@frankhymus I tried two "tricks" with this shot. (And by "tricks" I mean tips I had learned from different articles I read.)
1. Use smaller aperture to capture more eyes in focus when you have more than one face. (Focus is a huge issue for me. I'm going to mess around and see if I can find my sweet spot on my zoom lenses.)
2. Use auto ISO to get the correct exposure. My shots are consistently underexposed even with aperture fully open. Auto ISO is not perfect, as I'm finding, so I'm trying to find the right balance.
How would this situation have been handled better?
@shesnapped when they're in nearly the same plane like in your photo, f5.6 is probably small enough to get them all in focus. I shoot in aperture priority mode unless (in the case of the babies especially ) I know I am going to need to freeze motion, and then in S mode.
@frankhymus@joysabin@tracys They were swinging back and forth for this series of shots, and I was kneeled down in front of them. (One of my favorite shots of their laughter was the absolute most horrible shot of mom's .... Don't even know if I can do anything with that shot, sadly. Maybe I'll post the SOOC and see if anyone has any ideas.) I much prefer the open aperture and blurry background, but as you said Tracy, the back and forth swinging is a tough shot. Definitely share your focus settings!
My workflow starts with importing to Lightroom, where I do all the basics like lens correction, chromatic aberration removal, small sharpening and luminance adjustment, then correct WB, tones, and add a spot of vibrance. From there I'm stuck because I don't know where to go to give it that awesome look that doesn't look like a snapshot. (And I understand that starts as soon as you bring the camera to your eye, so you see my dilemma!) I've started exporting to various programs like On1, Nik, etc for their different presets and just messing around to see what looks acceptable, but it always seems to be just a shot in the dark. And that's how I come to spend an hour on one shot. I have Photoshop as well, but am still a novice in there especially with portraits!
Oh I meant in processing if you end up in a situation. I'm not sure what program you're using to edit though. I like (when I am able!) to have the focus sharper on the subject thsn background (wider aperture ) and then use editing to lighten the subject and subtle darken the edges at the same time
1. Portraits can stand a lot of SELECTIVE sharpening in a number of places. Concentrate on the EYES, and especially if you have multiple subjects )hard! to get right, but worth it of course). Since you are not comfortable in big Photoshop yet, try the RADIAL FILTER. Click on that oval in the tool bar and it will open up numerous parameters on the right. Look for "Sharpness" towards the bottom, and click + to give you some positive extra sharpness. Place the cursor directly over the center of an eye and drag out the circle to cover the eye and see where that gets you. Experiment with more or less. If you graduate to big Photoshop, doing it on a separate layer with layer masks gives you much more leeway and flexibility, but if you aren't there yet, don't worry, you'll get there.
A radial filter can also add highlights to eyes that might have gone shaded or shadowed. The Shadows slider (or the Exposure slider, or both) can be effective here. Try to adjust just one, maybe two parameters on each instance of the filter.
The Adjustment Brush can also be used, same sort of parameters and you can cover a lot of irregular territory. But try to avoid too many big ones. Each one is a pig when it comes to CPU cycles. Still. Performance improved over the last few releases but still stinks.
The nice thing about the Radial Filter is that the effect is graded from the center out to the edge of the circle. It also has some nice options. Watch if you want the effect inside or outside the circle. Usually it will be inside, but... That option can be missed, it's way down at the bottom of the parameter panel.
If you've never played with these, that's your next step in moving up a notch.
Hey! so we are partners in get pushed.... I like your photos alot. So I was thinking about a challenge for you - Reflection, take a photo that the main subject is reflection.Have fun!
What program do you use for editing? What did you find yourself doing when you edited this pic (what bothers you?)?
I don't think there is really anything "correct" or not because it's what matters to you with a photo. The expressions on all 3 is great in your photo!
If it were me, I'd try to get more light and focus on the subjects, and less on the edges/background if that makes sense?
This shot works very nicely. It might work even nicer if you could shoot with a much wider aperture than f/11, say at least f/5.6, whatever will get the subjects in complete focus, but yet blur the background some. It would work even nicer if the distance from you to the subjects was less than the distance from the subjects to the background. This gives a background blur effect too, separate from the aperture of the lens. The techie term is the "hyperfocal distance" effect, and you can Google that if you'd like to know more.
Cheers.
If you would rather, we can do it via email. hymus@optonline.net
Let's try for two weeks and see how it goes?
What would have been the proper crop for mom's legs?
1. Use smaller aperture to capture more eyes in focus when you have more than one face. (Focus is a huge issue for me. I'm going to mess around and see if I can find my sweet spot on my zoom lenses.)
2. Use auto ISO to get the correct exposure. My shots are consistently underexposed even with aperture fully open. Auto ISO is not perfect, as I'm finding, so I'm trying to find the right balance.
How would this situation have been handled better?
My workflow starts with importing to Lightroom, where I do all the basics like lens correction, chromatic aberration removal, small sharpening and luminance adjustment, then correct WB, tones, and add a spot of vibrance. From there I'm stuck because I don't know where to go to give it that awesome look that doesn't look like a snapshot. (And I understand that starts as soon as you bring the camera to your eye, so you see my dilemma!) I've started exporting to various programs like On1, Nik, etc for their different presets and just messing around to see what looks acceptable, but it always seems to be just a shot in the dark. And that's how I come to spend an hour on one shot. I have Photoshop as well, but am still a novice in there especially with portraits!
1. Portraits can stand a lot of SELECTIVE sharpening in a number of places. Concentrate on the EYES, and especially if you have multiple subjects )hard! to get right, but worth it of course). Since you are not comfortable in big Photoshop yet, try the RADIAL FILTER. Click on that oval in the tool bar and it will open up numerous parameters on the right. Look for "Sharpness" towards the bottom, and click + to give you some positive extra sharpness. Place the cursor directly over the center of an eye and drag out the circle to cover the eye and see where that gets you. Experiment with more or less. If you graduate to big Photoshop, doing it on a separate layer with layer masks gives you much more leeway and flexibility, but if you aren't there yet, don't worry, you'll get there.
A radial filter can also add highlights to eyes that might have gone shaded or shadowed. The Shadows slider (or the Exposure slider, or both) can be effective here. Try to adjust just one, maybe two parameters on each instance of the filter.
The Adjustment Brush can also be used, same sort of parameters and you can cover a lot of irregular territory. But try to avoid too many big ones. Each one is a pig when it comes to CPU cycles. Still. Performance improved over the last few releases but still stinks.
The nice thing about the Radial Filter is that the effect is graded from the center out to the edge of the circle. It also has some nice options. Watch if you want the effect inside or outside the circle. Usually it will be inside, but... That option can be missed, it's way down at the bottom of the parameter panel.
If you've never played with these, that's your next step in moving up a notch.
Cheers.