Maternity Shoot

[lemon]

Hello everyone!
I recently rented studio equipment for the first time ever, and took a few pictures of my best friend and her boyfriend. I would like to see how you would edit one of these...

[jerryph]

Before editing, there are 3 other and more important issues which should have been addressed:

1. The focus is lightly off

2. The lighting is underexposed by about 1-1.5 stops and a little flat

3. Composition is lacking attention

You have to REALLY pay attention to make sure that your subjects are *tack* sharp and your lighting is not ordinary and flat looking. On top of that, your shot is composed in such a way that I see a black line denoting the end of your backdrop and it seems inordinately wrinkled and bunched up underneath them... causing a very distracting characteristic in the photo. The angle is also less than optimal as I do not clearly see one face or the other, something that is the heart of a portrait... only superceded by centering the focus on the eyes.

First, learn how to use a flash light meter or how to read your histograms. You need to make sure your subjects are properly lit and exposed. Also, a wise man once said "if you want to make a picture interesting... don't light all of it!". Your entire frame is not only underexposed, but entirely, evenly underexposed. If you had 2 light sources, and your subjects are low to the ground as they are... perhaps why aren't the lights down there with them? How about some back or side lighting techniques?

Studio lighting is a world unto itself and it is something that is not easy to learn. I think it was perhaps a bit of a mistake to just rent some equipment and not know how to use it or know how to light before taking such important photos. Maybe what would have been better would have been to read/study and practice the info offered on www.strobist.com in the lighting 101 and 102 sections, then doing this shoot.

The basic rule of photography is that a poorly taken picture cannot be edited into a great picture, but a well taken picture can be edited to be better. Not saying that yours was poor, but it does have several beginner mistakes that we all made, yeah, me too.

If I was you, and I had the chance to redo the session, I would schedule it and before going there to reshoot the session, get the basics of lighting down and then follow the rules for the basics of photography to nail down some nice clear well exposed shots... and from there do some post processing that can take a nice shot and make it nicer. :)

If it is any consolation, your first attempt was better than mine. :D

[lemon]

Thank you for all the information, and advice.

We had done the shoot just for fun, and purely for my practice. She just wanted to help me... all my friends have loved the photo's and what I really wanted to hear what was wrong with it, so that I can improve...I am the type of person that needs to learn from their mistakes, and if I hadn't rented the photo equipment, I never would have made these mistakes, and I would have made them all again anyways... so no.. renting the equipment was not a mistake.. it was a learning experience for me. Now I can improve.
Once again thank you, and I will continue to study lighting and work on my focusing...hope you have a wonderful day! :D

[CallMeNovice]

I liked the shots (where did the other two go?), but with my limited knowledge couldn't quite put my finger on where they could be improved and what to do to improve them ... I love Jerry's input on photos - he's always direct and specific with his advice (which, to me, is very helpful to my learning curve :) )

I have been to the "stobist.com" site and it is very helpful ... I'm sure I should go back there again and again until I have it memorized!

Happy Shooting!

[Goose]

Hi

New to this site so hello. I liked the idea. I am no expert so I hope you don't mind me posting my efforts.

Cheers

Goose

[lemon]

No, not at all! Thanks for the effort! It looks wonderful! May I ask what you did?

[Kaye]

Hello everyone!
I recently rented studio equipment for the first time ever, and took a few pictures of my best friend and her boyfriend. I would like to see how you would edit one of these...

2282 2283 2284

Lemon, your original is on the left.I enjoy trying out different edits - I tried to create a different atmosphere. Bit rushed. I used various lighting affects in Photoshop as Goose probably did also.

[treetop]

I must say I like the third shot Kaye , it looks warmer, I think that's the right term anyway.

[Goose]

Hi

Sorry for not responding sooner! As Kaye says I just had a quick play with it in Lightroom and Photoshop: I cropped it, altered the exposure, warmed it up a bit, a tiny bit of unsharp mask and played around with the lighting (there is a lighting plug-in in PS).

I highly recommend buying PS or Lightroom (using Lightroom a lot these days (took a while to convince me though)). When I started I picked up a cheap legit version of PS on eBay - it was an older version (v5 if I remember correctly) but was useful to learn the basics.

A lot of problems can be corrected with PS but of course the secret is taking a good photo to start with! I am still learning that bit!:)

Goose

[lemon]

Wow! These are all really great!

I don't have PS, but I have been using GIMP, and so far, I really like it.

I would like to say thanks to Jerry for telling me like it is, even though, I must say, it did sting a bit...:( It's always hard hearing that something your so proud of, really isn't anything to be proud of...lol. But it has made me wanna work that much harder to figure everything out!
So... Thanks so much, and I will continue to post photo's to critique.. no matter how scared I am...lol!

[Pat]

Well this just looked like a fun pic to play with, but I'm not sure I can recall all I did here. I did increase contrast and colour saturation. I cloned areas of her skin then masked all but her skin (so her skin was selected) and evened the tone a little. I then applied a really nice free plugin that'll work with Gimp, Photoshop or any app that will accept .8bf plugins. If you don't have such an app this nifty little set also comes with it's own free app. Virtual Photographer and it's app, Virtual Studio can be found here (http://www.optikvervelabs.com/).
Another interesting free .8bf plugin is Filter Forge (http://www.filterforge.com/download/). The photo effects is the one you want.
The Caveat; While plugins save time can produce results beyond the capabilities of someone just learning the app, eventually you should learn the processes behind the plugins.

Cheers...

[Gillan]

Hi, here's my effort

Alan

[mrdoug]

This editing stuff is kinda fun... hope you enjoy.

[StephenK]

Found this little gem posted some time ago... have a little time on my hands so thought I'd explore possibilities...

Channels masks were my close friend with this edit... used them for sharpening, for selective softening, and for carving out details that are often hard to get to (was helpful with the hair in this one :^)

Love the photo! I suspect that the child is about a year old by now! :^)