First Photo Shoot

[lilpacheco]

Hi everyone! I'm new here...I had my first ever photo shoot yesterday with my friend and her little girls. I've only been doing photography for less than a year, so I'm definitely a newbie. Looking for some helpful criticism on my pictures. Thanks!

[Ojum]

The second one is really nice. I love the angle of it, nice depth of field.

[Robert_Lay]

I'm not a fan of selective coloring. However, other than the gimmick of the blue eyes, the baby picture is adorable.

The first picture is too bright and is losing lots of pixels at both ends of the histogram through insufficient dynamic range of the system to capture the full range of tones in the scene. In other words, it's blown out in the highlights and blocked up in the shadows all at the same time.

My rendition below shows how I think her facial tones should be.

The HDR references to follow are probably not practical for grab shots, but if you use exposure bracketing and a tripod you might manage to get 2 or three frames that can be used with HDR techniques to make the situation more manageable. Another alternative is to find open shade for portrait work and avoid the HDR problem altogether.

Step-by-step Tutorial on "Merge to HDR"
Now available at the following Web site:
http://www.zaffora.com/W9DMK/UsingHDR.htm
or as a downloadable PDF:
http://www.zaffora.com/W9DMK/UsingHDR.pdf

Here's a link to an example of how a Merge to HDR should work:
http://photography-on-the.net/forum/showthread.php?t=287931&highlight=HDR

[TheGlyph]

Very nice tutorial Robert_Lay, thanks for posting it!

[RedHot]

To me, the selective color of blue eyes makes the baby seem, well a little satanic. :)