Faces from our past

[slowpez]

I am hoping to get some helpful critiques and comments here. Here are two of series of shots I took while in Williamsburg and Gettysburg. I was using a hand held Tamron 70-300mm lens so they are a little soft but I wanted to take the pics without the subject noticing.





I know most of my pictures are pretty bad but I will keep posting in the hopes that some of them may show improvement if nothing else.
Again, thanks for any help you can give me. Susan

[Zewrak]

I like them.

The second is a bit too harsh cropped i think, I would like to see more of the hat. Generally when I look at pictures from events like this, I want to see more of the enviroment. The first one tells me more that something out of the ordinary is going on.

And I really, really think that you should try these two pictures in highcontrast black and white. They look a tad underexposed, their skincolours seem a bit dark? Or are you that dark in the southern USA?

Looking at your album on flickr, I would say that for me Gettysburg Reenactors4, Jamestown 014 and the Canon shots are the best ones. But none is as you say bad.

Thumbs up and keep practicing

[slowpez]

Again zewrak, thanks for your comments. I really appreciate that you checked out the rest of my pictures on flickr. The first shot was cropped - there was a woman in costume on the bottom right and her face was turned toward the two men so I cropped her out. The second shot wasn't cropped in pp but I used the 300mm again and, as you mentioned in the other post, zoomed in too closely. I am really going to work on not doing that.
You have been really helpful and I do appreciate it.
Susan

[Zewrak]

Just to show how powerful it can be not to zoom too much, I am going to let you in on a secret of one of my own pictures and ontop of that, one of the best pictures I have yet shot (in my own opinion).

Here is what I show people:


And here is the unedited original:


As you can see, the original gives me alot of options when it comes to cropping. Especially when it is for internet use. Not as much when it comes to bigger prints though.

I just try to keep as much data as possible intact before I start the postprocessing. The finished picture is often far from what I shoot. Ofcourse, when I can and got time to setup a proper shot, I do everything I can to get the original as close to the outcome I want. But at live events thats hard to do, and then I try to get more surroundings and such so that I get more to work with.

[slowpez]

Thanks for sharing. Great shot and great example. A picture is worth a thousand words. Ha!
Thanks again for taking the time to help, Susan