Shooting people.

[Warman]

Shooting people is the photography area where i fell i am less confortable with so i have been trying to improve. These are two of my attempts, please give me a few pointers here. :)

http://bragatel.pt/warman/lethargy.jpg
http://bragatel.pt/warman/bruxa.jpg

[Meerkat17]

They are both very good shots but I feel I want to crop them at the sides and make more of the subject which is the person.

Then again what do I know!

Well done Warman

cheers
David

[Warman]

Some people here stressed a lot the "rule of the thirds", i had to check out the meaning of that and been trying to make use of the technique.
Thats why its not cropped closer to the subject which is what i would normaly do but then again, maybe im using the technique wrongly.
Anyway, thx a lot for your comments. :)

[roanjohn]

Hmmmmmmm..........

I'm not too sure about these.....

The essense of capturing candid shots are the expressions........these shots have it.............but nothing that grabs me (IMO).

The first one would've been nice without the monitor as the background.

The second one...........hmmmmmmm.................Something is missing from the subject.

And yes, a tighter crop would help......Or maybe a nice blur on the background.

Ro1

[Warman]

Could you perhaps post a cropped version you felt was more to your liking? Like i said, this rule of thirds iludes me somewhat and it would be nice to compare.

[mvrekum]

The picture of the girl has a good composition, however she is a static subject. Have her do something or have her hold something in her hands to bring more 'life' into the picture.

The portrait of the man has to much useless space behind his head. You should have panned the camera a little to the left => "The rule of thirds", it is the most important rule in photography!
The expression however is good.

Martin

[Meerkat17]

Here's how I see them, not that I'm any expert but by bringing the subject to the front of the picture it seems to work much better. Both are still a little rough I only used "quick masks" on them.

I believe that when a subject is looking out of the picture you are limited with your crop as you must leave more space to the side they looking out of, which I have done to the left side of both pic's.

Cheers
David

http://www.btinternet.com/~David.Lewins/g5/images/lethargy.jpg
http://www.btinternet.com/~David.Lewins/g5/images/bruxa.jpg

[roanjohn]

I am biased towards the first image so I only worked on that one.

Here it is......

I did not crop..........But I added gaug. blur to the background. I wanted to take the attention away from the monitor and into the person.

http://www.pbase.com/image/25594311.jpg

What do you think??

Look at the photos side by side if you see an improvement.

Ro1

[Warman]

I can't see it, the picture shows the broken URL X. :(

[tenerife]

Well the Meerkat portraits are right....

Open the lens, work with 2.8 with unsharp background..
Try different angle, go your own way.....

Regards from Tenerife
klaus

[Jesper]

The rule of thirds is a good guideline, but it's not really a rule, only a guideline - that means, often it works, but not always.

One other very important thing is to be aware of the background in your photos. In both your photos, the background is quite distracting - if you look at the photo, your eye is drawn to all the stuff in the background, and not immediately to the main subject. As others have suggested, you can use a small depth of field (use a larger aperture) to blur out the background, but it's even better to be aware of the background at the moment you make the photo and make sure there isn't a lot of distracting stuff there.

Here are some interesting books about composition:

Photographic Composition (http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0817454276/ref=sr_aps_books_1_1/026-8307379-0532400) by Tom Grill & Mark Scanlon
Learning to See Creatively (http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0817441816/qid=1075542461/sr=2-1/ref=sr_2_3_1/026-8307379-0532400) by Bryan Peterson