Just looking for any general advice for production and post-production. I've improved a bit over the past year but have some ways to go still, so any critiques would be appreciated!
Just looking for any general advice for production and post-production. I've improved a bit over the past year but have some ways to go still, so any critiques would be appreciated!
Thanks, you've confirmed my suspicions that perhaps that subjects look a little underexposed, I'm still developing "my eye" and finding the right balance. Seems as though I need to invest in some gear for this type of shoot. Anything you can suggest might help a bit in post? I also understand your point about the perspective, I kind of just let my daughter run around and snap whatever I can get, but perhaps I can do a better job when culling for consistency purposes. Many thanks for your insights, it was quite a relief to get a response at all!
I agree with Jerry, they are a bit underexposed. But if you shoot in RAW this is easily fixed, depending on how good your camera is and at what ISO you were shooting. Here's a before/after of a shot I took last weekend. And there's plenty more dynamic range to pull from the image, there is not a grain in sight even at 100%:
Maybe I was a bit unspecific, the edited version does have a small amount of global exposure that has been raised, but there is local editing as well in Lightroom in the shadows.
There are a lot of photographers that prefer to shoot with natural light and then editing them afterwards, many of these shots are correctly exposed for that purpose.
But when not using say a reflector in this case this would mean raising ISO quite a bit if you still want decent shutter speeds which you need when photographing kids, if you don't want 99% blurry shots or the kids are specially trained or something :) With high ISO you don't have much leeway in pushing it in post.
Something I haven't said thus far, but should have said in my first post in the thread is that I really like the pics and the expressions they have given. Well done Nathan!
Thanks both of you for your advice! Jerry I really appreciate you taking the time to download my images and try a few things out as an example, and Joakim thanks for showing me your before and after photos - both we're extremely helpful when heading back into LR. I think you'll both be happy to learn that I do shoot in RAW, so I'm off to a good start. I have limited experience and limited gear (no proper flash) so I was relying on the sunset in the back to give the background a nice effect but clearly the shots would benefit from some localized editing. I went for the adjustment brush rather than the radial filter, not sure if that is the right technique but I found that to be easier to control the mask. I'm sure I could spend a little more time finessing my masking or the adjustments (or even invest in flash, down the road) but I wanted to share my results with both of you. Clearly there is an improvement but I wanted to keep it subtle, many thanks for the help - not perfect but I am happier with these versions than the originals.
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Thanks Jerry! I think I see what you mean about lifting the light a little further, and I definitely used your advice about increasing contrast and saturation a bit but I didn't think about the white balance issue - seems like I could spend forever tweaking and touching up, every time I go into LR I see something new on an old photo that needs some work, it's hard to know when to stop!
Cute family! As mentioned by others main problem in separating models from the background (model brighter and background darker) and I see you did improve this in your latest post process;) Well done and good luck with your next shoot!
Thanks Martin!