your thoughts appreciated

I share these pix just to hear your ideas & thoughts, whether it be processing recommendations or your thoughts on this 50 yr old. Personally I think she's a babe.

One's a fun pix

1. First image: Perfectly adequate shot. Nice soft lighting. Definitely could use some PP (some contrast on subject; paint with light on her, to bring out some drama, etc..). I might blur or desaturate the background, to--again--keep the eye focused on the subject.

2. Second image. This is really bad, in almost every aspect. (I would normally not make this comment to a beginning photographer, but you did specifically ask for feedback.). It's fine to have a subject have a silly expression--no real problem there. But you did just a dreadful job compositing 2 images . . . it looks immediately and obviously fake. Once you have been post-processing for a few months, you'll never make these kinds of mistakes, so don't let this failure get you down. (We all did crappy jobs our first few months.) Keep practicing!!

Her body position also does not make sense. Either have the subject pose correctly, or use PP software (I think CS5's puppet-wrap might work here) to adjust her to make it look more believable. If your goal was to have her in an exaggerated position (ie, one that could not happen in real life), then that is fine. But you have the worst of both worlds right now . . . it looks fake, but not so fake that we know you were not trying for a realistic look. [It's sort of like what my own beginning photography teacher emphasized: It's fine to tilt the horizon, to add drama, as long as it's clear that you are doing it intentionally. But if you tilt it only a few degrees, it looks sloppy and looks like you are not a skilled photographer--like someone who does not know how to level a horizon.]

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http://www.pbase.com/santamonica

Love the first shot! Second one not so much, but I bet you had fun playing with it

Come on. Don't be too hard on me. Iam a beginner who used Scott Kelby and Elements 7. But I'm having a ton of fun learning with a hotty model.

Nice! I like it

nucmanchh said:

Nice! I like it

Click to expand...

Thank you.

Of course, if you like that, we should explore what I did that you like
(and maybe things I did that you don't like too).

Take a look at the eyes (and zoom in on them enough to see the pixels to see what was done). Also look at the background, and the chair she is sitting in.

The fun thing though really is what the odd bordering added. I flat did not like the hand in the original, and did a lot of work to make it less of a problem. But when I was "done", I sat back and looked at it and realized something really interesting, which just happened to cure the problem of that arm and hand distracting from the view of her face. So made the corners black... But it needed more, and the red and white part got added.

The reasons for the odd border are complex, so I wouldn't expect you to necessarily recognize why it's there; but if you want to try analyzing it before I tell you, it might be an interesting exercise.

Of course it's necessary also to realize that some people won't like it at all! It might be just as interesting for someone who doesn't like it to very specifically state what they don't like!

I often try to make the eyes pop. Got the tech from Scott Kelby.

Did you think I increased unsharpened too much? Or do u just not like the tech. The back ground I used Glass. blur. Not sure what u mean by the chair she is sitting on?

Tell me about the border, b/c I don't know where to start in explaining or attempting to explain what you did. The colors work well though

Ok, I c what you did to the eyes and chair. Didn't follow what u were saying first time. Sorry. Tell me exactly what you did to the eyes ... maybe use blur filter?

You used that border because he shot it at wide-angle and it made the nearest objects out-of-proportion, like those giant dog-nose shots that are popular.

Step back and zoom in to avoid it.

nucmanchh said:

Ok, I c what you did to the eyes and chair. Didn't follow what u were saying first time. Sorry. Tell me exactly what you did to the eyes ... maybe use blur filter?

Click to expand...

The catch light in the eyes was too big. Plus the brightness of some pixels in the iris was too high. It might be that both came from using USM. I tend to use fairly high levels of USM and then go in and use a tool to fix the artifacts. Depending on what it needs that might be a clone tool, a smudge tool, a blur tool, or a dodge/burn tool. In this case the original gave her sort of a blurried eyed look (suggestive of too alcohol intoxication, which I didn't think was complementary). The hard part was toning it back a little in brightness, yet still allowing the beautiful color and "awareness" look come through. A tough one to balance, and how far to go is probably open to debate.

The rest of it mostly amounted to blurring the background and sharpening the subject to draw attention to her face and reduce the distractions drawing attention elsewhere.

Mark3M said:

You used that border because he shot it at wide-angle and it made the nearest objects out-of-proportion, like those giant dog-nose shots that are popular.

Step back and zoom in to avoid it.

Click to expand...

Well, that was certainly the major problem with the composition, and it was in fact clearly corrected by the border. But, as I mentioned, eliminating that hand and forearm was a side effect!

The hand had other problems too. Lets just say It had way too much detail for a woman of that age! I'd smoothed it out, and made it look like an 18 year old's hand, and with that the perspective distortion didn't look bad at all. The hand and angle of the arm sort of anchored the image.

In fact, it was that angle, along with the angle at the top going down the line of her head to her arm, that caught my attention. It could have been done with the crop leaving the arm and hand in, because that angle and the angle of the cushion are all complimentary. But... the bottom would still be too busy with distractions. And the result of moving the crop line high enough to eliminate the arm and hand still has the same effect, perhaps in even a more attractive way, by playing off the perpendicular angle of the upper arm, rather than the deleted parallel angles, The other nice "line" that is affected is the red necklace, which dissects the angles of the two angled black borders above and below.)

Hence the reason I cropped the border the way I did was to make effective use of the angles of her arms to help focus attention on her face. Of equal importance was just removing the distraction of all the detail in those two corners. The side effects were not needing to smooth out the hand and arm, and removing the effects on composition of the perspective distortion.

I don't know that the above is useful to anyone, but it was fun going through the process and seeing what the effects were.

Thanks! Great advice and very helpful!