Teach me something - C&C please

Digirame wrote: Remember first that everything in the photo is important (not just the subject matter).

Great - that sounds so obvious, but I didn't really think about it until you've said it. I'm going to file that in the forefront of my brain

So by understanding that, you could have moved around slightly to have had a better background. Sometimes it only takes a few inches...think about that next time you are looking through the viewfinder or the LCD. I would have had her more towards the center, (but still offset to the left). There's much too much empty space on the right. The upper left part of the background is distracting. I don't like cropping off the top of the head, although some people take closeup portraits of people that way. I would have shown more of the surroundings...basically backed off a little so the fingers aren't so close to the bottom.

The good part of the photo is your child, so by thinking of the other things in the photo...that could improve it a lot. Plus I would have waited until she had shown more of her face in better lighting. It's similar to whether I'm taking pictures of birds or people...waiting for the precise moment when they turn the head a certain way. A lot of this is subjective, as each person likes different things different ways. So, experiment some...a most importantly create a picture in the way that best looks good to you.

Thanks Digirame - I do like the photo, but I know it is imperfect, which is why I posted it up for a critique. Several things were happening at that moment in time - the storm was blowing in and I was worrying about the (non weatherproofed) 650D getting rained on; the wind was picking up fast and the lighting was changing with the clouds; and the kids were jumping around like mad. When my daughter sat down to line up the fallen tree nuts at the base of the monument, I got that anxious/excited feeling that "this could be a great shot", but I knew I only had seconds until she jumped up again to run off. So I ducked down quickly and began to snap - one, two, three shots and she was gone. I wonder at what point it becomes second nature to zoom/frame/focus/shoot with such proficiency as to get-it-right in that tiny moment of opportunity. Fiddling around with Manual mode has given me a new found respect for the experts

dave vichich wrote: This edit was with CS6. I haven't taken any classes, but I read a lot of stuff on the net, and I have watched quite a few videos from Russell Brown about editing using Photoshop. (just do a search)

I have been using Photoshop or Elements for 10 or more years.

I wish I would have recorded with quicktime what I did, cause when I start working on an image, I try so many things that sometimes I forget what I did and when.

In camera raw, yes, you can run JPG's through camera raw, I lightened the shadows some, raised the highlights some, and turned it into a black and white.

In CS6, I removed the stick using the clone tool. I then used the healing brush to even that area out. I then made two duplicate layers. One to add grit, one to smooth the background and her skin. Along with the layers, I added a mask. A mask makes it so you let some of that layer though, but not all of it. So I molded the layer masks as I wanted, making the foreground and her hair be (probably) a bit overcooked. The smoothening layer is there to smooth out her legs, arms, and the background.

It probably took about 10 - 15 minutes before I had where it was pretty much to my liking.

I don't know how much post processing you've done, but it's worth your time to develop some skills at it.

I hope this helped some.

Thanks again Dave, you make it sound so simple but in fact your terms are a whole new language for me . The extent of my post-processing experience has been clicking one or two presets on iPhoto, but I've now started to experiment with Elements, so I have a long way to go.

10 minutes to achieve all your processing is quite a feat, I'm going to take some time to watch Russell Brown vids  as you have suggested.

To round out the discussion, here is another shot taken at the same time, this time of the figure standing atop the war monument. I thought that the figure against the cloudy sky would make for a nice shot. I added a sepia effect to enhance the drama, but I wonder how it would have looked with a ND filter and tripod! Next investment - a tripod.

For King and Country