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Thread: My lovely daughter

  1. #1
    JemC's Avatar
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    My lovely daughter

    Here's one of my daughter(on the right) and her friend.
    c+c welcome


    My lovely daughter

  2. #2
    rpcrowe's Avatar
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    Re: My lovely daughter

    Very lovely young ladies. You should be very proud. Nice lighting on the girls but, the background is quite busy and somewhat distracting especially with the column "growing" out of the head. Perhaps a diferent angle or different background might help. Lacking that, a wide aperture might have helped throw the BG out of focus to focus more interest in the young ladies....

    Another way to work with this image would be to crop it somewhat more closely and possibly add some blur to the background area. Actually, you could also use the clone stamp and get rid of the column jutting out of the girl's head...

  3. #3
    Moderator Donald's Avatar
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    Re: My lovely daughter

    As I've written on here before, I don't offer myself as a sage so far as people photography is concerned. However, there are a couple of things I think I can refer to that might warrant some attention:
    1. The young lady with your daughter has one of the pillars coming out of the top of her head.
    2. I see, from the EXIF data that there was an auto flash firing. The people are well exposed, but the background is very light and the sky is blown. Getting the lighting right in a situation like this is always a challenge. With the right equipment to hand it would have been a case of setting the camera to expose for the ambient light and then using the flash to illuminate the people.
    Last edited by Donald; 16th November 2012 at 08:20 PM.

  4. #4
    JemC's Avatar
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    Re: My lovely daughter

    Thank you for your comments, more attention to detail needed on my part..

  5. #5
    Moderator Donald's Avatar
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    Re: My lovely daughter

    James - If you look at some images you really admire of similar situations, I'll bet that what you find is that the photographer paid as much attention to the background as to the subjects in the foreground. We often look at an image and wonder why is it so much better than our own efforts and don't see that what's different is that the photographer has paid attention to the whole frame. The fact is that in your picture, your daughter and her friend appear as good as they would do in many others taken by photographers that cost you a good deal of money. But the difference, I'd suggest, is that the good ones are thinking about what's in the whole frame, not just thinking about the subjects and forgetting about the background.

    Training ourselves to always think about the whole frame is part of the learning that, when you master it, will result in a big step up in image quality.
    Last edited by Donald; 16th November 2012 at 09:17 PM.

  6. #6
    Moderator Dave Humphries's Avatar
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    Re: My lovely daughter

    Hi James,

    Looking at the EXIF I also note that this was shot with an Olympus VG110 - a small sensor camera, not a DSLR - this explains why so much is in focus even at "f/2.9" even with focus on the girls.

    There are several things you did right though; not getting too close, shooting wide open, not blowing anything important.

    Cheers,

  7. #7
    rpcrowe's Avatar
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    Re: My lovely daughter

    Along the lines that Donald mentioned; there was a survey that traced the eye patterns of successful engineers and successful artists as they viewed images. The engineers would concentrate on one portion (usually the most important) of the image almost to the exclusion of the rest of the image. Artists would look all over the image, not just at the significant portions...

    Looking at the background to reduce/eliminate any distracting elements and looking at the borders of the image to ensure that there is not some foreign object or person intruding into the frame is the hallmark of a good photographer...

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