[MrJed]

Here is a photo I took of my daughter on a recent walk that our family took. I used fill flash set to -.7 stops to brighten the shadows. So far, I haven't done any post processing. I have some thoughts on what would make the image better, but was interested in what you all had to say. Thanks!

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[PJ1]

Nice colours. Kids always make for cute shots. But I think I would prefer to see just a little bit of face. That can work with an angled away shot if it shows the subject's attention is focused on something.

[MrJed]

Thanks for the suggestion. Funny thing is, I liked this particular picture because it didn't show her face! Wow, how tastes vary! Of course, I do see her face everyday, so I might have a different perspective than someone who has never seen her before.

My only critique as the photographer is that her dress is a little overexposed - I can probably fix this in post-processing if I learn how. But I made the choice to over-expose her dress slightly in order to get better shadow detail in the surroundings.

Appreciate any other comments too!

[pjm1]

MrJed, I know what you mean re: not always seeing faces of your own kids in photos - I can feel the same with my ones, too (and I don't mean that to sound as bad as it probably does!)

My thoughts and suggestions, based on what I'm imagining the scene could be like in slightly different light etc:

1. For me the background woods are very busy and a bit distracting. A shallower DOF would definitely help to blur out. Vignetting could help but would be a bit "obvious" so an alternative would be to mist it slightly in PP.
2. The light is quite "broad" (I don't know what the right term is, but it looks like normal daytime light obviously reduced because of the trees). I think the scene would look even more appealing in the golden hours - shallow light, biased towards the yellows and reds.
3. The subject is great and needs to stand out a bit more from the background (related to 1 perhaps).

I've had a quick play and overdone the PP a tad because I rushed it... but hopefully shows the effect I'd go for personally. Ideally, I'd aim to reshoot in different circumstances (late evening perhaps, use big aperture), but PP can help simulate some of this a bit.

But then that's it in a nutshell - it's personal and what I see is probably quite different from what you actually saw or envisaged.

Hope it's food for thought though... there are no right answers in all this!

[MrJed]

Thanks, pjm1! Appreciate the feedback.

I agree that the background could use more bokeh to smooth it out. I should have been shooting with my A-50/1.7, but it is so stinking hard to manual focus on kids with that lens! I am really thinking about the DA 35/2.4 for family shots - a situation like this could have used better bokeh and this lens would have delivered.

I think it's interesting you commented on the light - I actually did shoot this shot in the later evening, after 6:30pm. The sunlight was coming in at a strong angle and casting some shadows, so I used the camera's built-in flash set at -.7 (I think) to eliminate some of the shadows. Unfortunately, that also took away some of the softness of the evening sun. Since this shot, I have been using the flash set at -1 or -1.3 and have had more natural results, without the shadows.

Thanks to for showing me your rendition - I like the shift of colors, but I don't think I would go quite so far. A bit of vignetting might help attract one's attention away from the corners. The blur effect that you added did rather the same, I think.

[K McCall]

Hi, MrJed! I believe our daughters might be around the same age - mine is 2 1/2, and a challenge to keep still long enough to get in focus!

Also, I'm just throwing this out there: I think that some people (at least me, anyway) might be more hesitant to offer a critique on a photo of someone's child. I find it personally difficult to divorce myself from the emotional attachment I have of a photo of my daughter and to look at it through the eyes of a stranger.

That said, I have a couple of quibble with the composition. The one grey fence post is going directly into her head. Since it's the only grey thing in the frame, it's a bit distracting. Likewise the tiny bit of branch on the far right of the frame is nearly as bright as her dress and keeps drawing my eye, even though it adds nothing to the photo. A bit of cloning could fix both of those.

Speaking of bright parts, I wouldn't worry at all about the exposure of her dress. It's bright but not overexposed, and I personally prefer photos that have elements that hit both edges of the histogram. Probably the flash made the dress brighter than it would have been otherwise.

More importantly, I can't tell what the story of this photo is. Is she contemplative? Resting? Curious about something in the grass? Perhaps if you'd shot from a different angle - directly behind her, farther back, closer to the ground? - we could have been clued in more to the story. I too had a go with it in Lightroom, and I didn't know which direction to go with the processing.

I ended up with two versions - one warming up the white balance (I suspect your flash might have made it cooler than it would have been otherwise) and adding some vignetting, and one that has a darker, more ominous feel. In both instances, I cloned out those two parts I was referring to earlier.

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[MrJed]

Thanks, K McCall!

I hear what you are saying about how it is hard for some people to critique other people's kids. But both for the good and the bad, my two girls are my most-often chosen subjects. Figuring out creative ways to take their picture can be a challenge and it is one of the reasons that I posted this particular picture. It wasn't, in my opinion, my favorite or the best that I took of her that night - but it was "different!" (At least different than the way that I am used to seeing her.)

As for the green post - yeah, I noticed that and should do some kind of PP to remove it. My photography is much better than my PP, and I like taking pictures a lot more than I like processing. I definitely need to work on my processing skills! I could also crop the photo a bit more to remove a couple of the distracting edge elements. These were some very helpful suggestions.

Finally, as to the story of the photo - if I had to say, I think it would be "curious." The photo itself doesn't really tell that story, but I can tell it because I watched the entire scene unfold from behind the lens. Although, as you pointed out in your second edit in LR, it could be "mysterious" if I changed the background to grayscale, added some mild vignetting, and left her in color.

I really appreciate the feedback; receiving constructive criticism is tough from people who aren't into "photography." They know a good picture or a so-so picture, but they can't always tell you how to take a good picture and improve it.