need some opinions - are these shots worth keeping?

[philpereira]

Here are a couple of photos I took at my first wedding type event during the summer (it was actually just a reception locally, the couple had already gotten married in Hawaii). I was still using my 28-200 then, and it wasn't the fastest lens in the world as I found out that day. Anyway, I was looking through some of the photos, mostly as a way to practice my photoshopping, and got these to a point where I consider them almost usable, but I'm not entirely sure. The one with the two girls hugging looks nice, but it's still a bit dark and I'm not sure whether it's completely apparent they're embracing or if I got in too close for that shot. It was a backlit situation and I was trying to go for the natural light look, but I should have used the flash. With the blurry one, basically I have a hard time wrapping my mind around the concept of distinguishing between good blur and bad blur. Anyway, I present these to the jury, keep or toss?

[T.D.]

I'm no expert. That being said, my personal opinion is: Toss 'em.

[tim]

Toss 'em - first one is too blury, the 2nd not interesting.

[philpereira]

cool, thanks for the feedback. they're gone.

[BLINN]

use photoshop to turn the first one into a sketch using the graphic pen tool. I think the bride would really like that. As for the second one I would use PS and get rid of some shadows and then add noise to give that memory recall effect. Good luck

[marieD]

That is an excelent idea BLINN!!

[BLINN]

Thanks Marie, I have only shot 5 wedding since getting into photography (which was in DEC 2004) I shoot lots of frames and normally only post process the good ones. However every now and then I use a crapy photo and play with it. The younger brides like the modern styles and "off the wall" look. Why not give the client all that you can. Let them choose which ones they like. If they don't pick it Oh well, it was only one frame.

[kawter2]

file them in the round file cabnet

[CyberPet]

Really sloppy job, but I do find the second one being very interesting - if you work on it.

http://the-halls.se/edited/ahug.jpg

[philpereira]

that's some pretty nice stuff there petra, it's quite better than my version. i think the thing that makes me consider that one still is the interesting natural lighting and it does seem to capture a certain amount of emotion between friends. it's just too bad the shadows weren't exposed a little better.

[CyberPet]

Hard to know from the published image - but I did go wild with the dodge tool on this one to bring out the shadows (Dodge tool set to "Highlights" and at 10% opacity). I think you can get more detail out from her hair and the hand holding her. Might even get some detail in her left arm too... work on a new layer set to Overlay and fill it with 50% grey... will be nicer to the pixels in the end.

But yeah, I think you should keep that image, work with it more and it'll be a piece of art.