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Thread: Father and son

  1. #1
    JimG's Avatar
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    Father and son

    From a shoot i did last weekend. was my first experience doing family photos

    C&C are welcome!

    Father and son

  2. #2
    Daisy Mae's Avatar
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    Re: Father and son

    Hi Jimmy

    The lad has a wonderful smile and you have captured a very nice moment.

    This isn't really my area but I will throw some initial observations in.

    The background has too much going on with all those windows and frames and the red thing behind the boy and this feels like an awkward crop...hands chopped off and that top right corner edge draws my eye away and niggles me a bit. More space all round would be good.

    It would improve this scene greatly if the father was also looking at the camera..or much better the boy instead of looking down and out of shot.

    What do you feel about it as a shot?

  3. #3
    JimG's Avatar
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    Re: Father and son

    Quote Originally Posted by Daisy Mae View Post
    Hi Jimmy

    The lad has a wonderful smile and you have captured a very nice moment.

    This isn't really my area but I will throw some initial observations in.

    The background has too much going on with all those windows and frames and the red thing behind the boy and this feels like an awkward crop...hands chopped off and that top right corner edge draws my eye away and niggles me a bit. More space all round would be good.

    It would improve this scene greatly if the father was also looking at the camera..or much better the boy instead of looking down and out of shot.

    What do you feel about it as a shot?
    Hi Sharon, thanks for your feedback!

    i do agree the background is sub optimal, i have some shots with a better angle but i felt very strongly about the expression of the 2 subject in this specific photo.

    as far as the crop, again i agree that it isn't perfect, in the original crop there was a 3rd person on the left side but her expression did not match the feel of the father and his son so i decided to crop her out, i had to either chop a small part of his hand or keep it in but deal with the 3rd subject's coat which has a very distracting black and white checker pattern.

    as far as the top right corner, i could fix that very easily by just cloning the area. The door too, i can just un-saturate it to make it more pleasing. i will give it a shot tonight and repost the modifications

  4. #4

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    wm c boyer

    Re: Father and son

    The expression is to die for...lighting and location leave a lot to be desired. As one that has a racially mixed family...it is difficult to balance the lighting and, I often shoot in the shade.

  5. #5
    Daisy Mae's Avatar
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    Re: Father and son

    Jimmy..your reply to me suggests that you didn't have a great deal of say as to how the shoot went and possibly felt you couldn't make suggestions as to where people were placed and who was included in any one shot.

    I don't know the circumstances but maybe you have to work on being confident enough to direct people rather than taking a shot and cropping people out later and compromising your artistic integrity.

    They should be interested in the final shot and allow you to do your job in composing that.

    ( says Sharon the brave..haaa! )

  6. #6
    JimG's Avatar
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    Re: Father and son

    Hello again Sharon,

    nah i had enough latitude to make call, did i make them? probably not enough . i'm not use to drive people around in this context. that specific photo had nothing to do with being more or less telling what to do though, the kid was all over the place and having him behave for more then 5sec was extremely challenging, that what i was trying to capture.

    i was more so just letting them act as a family and once in a while i was asking them do either move around or to look at the camera.

    on that scene that i posted, the kid was actualy fighting with his father to get off the bench

    this is the shot i took 2sec before the one in my original post.

    Father and son

  7. #7
    Daisy Mae's Avatar
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    Re: Father and son

    I really like that family grouping.it all falls into place and makes sense in a way the crop doesn't and actually with the woman on the left and now. what is obviously a church building behind it gives context to the the whole shot.

    In the crop the Dad looking down seemed almost disinterested but in THIS...a very different story!

  8. #8
    Digital's Avatar
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    Re: Father and son

    I like this second photo, as well.


    Bruce

  9. #9
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    Re: Father and son

    Beautiful picture and looks very nice ..

  10. #10
    Moderator Dave Humphries's Avatar
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    Re: Father and son

    Hi Jimmy,

    I like the second image posted too - the one suggestion I'd make would be a tiddly bit of clockwise rotation to get the church vertical and bench more horizontal, but I would not attempt to correct the minor perspective issues of the church.

    He looks to be 'a handful'

    HTH,

  11. #11

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    Re: Father and son

    Personally Jimmy I rather like the first picture as the little boy is the subject of that one. With the man looking down he is in the picture and part of it but because we don't see his features he doesn't take it over. IMHO the woman in the second one and her very distinctive coat dominate it, especially as the little one is no longer looking straight into the camera.

    There is something I would try with the first one - desaturate the background to black and white, it often brings out the special aspects of these sort of shots. As you have done that very effectively with the depth of field it might not make much difference, but you never know till you try.

    Personally I would love this to have been one of mine, well done.

    Trying to photograph rapidly moving infants and animals is a really frustrating task. I had one once where they wanted a head and shoulder picture and an identification photo of a man which violent body movements, head shaking and facial ticks due to cerebral palsy, the more he tried to stay still the worse he was. I set up a pair of cameras on tripods set to make a series of rapid takes, sat him in front of a neural background in his wheel chair, then told him a good mucky joke he hadn't heard before and pressed the triggers. We had 42 to choose from and got one of each, we even got one for a passport. I always use rapid fire mode now for taking portraits.

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