Help with Colors

[jojostoll]

Hello,

This is my first post here and I am interested in what people would say about what I could do for more color, a better way to get this boarder to 'pop' more out of the picture. I played with Exposure Compensation and some pictures work, some don't and I was wondering what people have to say, play with white balance, different EC, change in metering and focus the metering on him, something totally different. Critiquing is more than welcome.

Thanks!

[Robert_Lay]

The ambient llighting can be your best friend or your worst enemy. I'll let you guess which it is here. There are two obvious problems with the lighting.
1) It's working pretty well for the background housing.
2) It's just not there for the boarders.

Getting a good picture from this scene is darn near impossible, unless you manage your background and manage your lighting, because mother nature and circumstances have been cruel to you, both in regard to the background and the lack of light on your subject. If you were take a different position so as to give them a different background and then, either
1) use your flash to help with the light. or
2) crank up the exposure.

See, there's little you can do with camera controls and various exposure settings!
Before you even get into those issues you have to create a scene that has some potential. In this scene, the lighting gives no contrast at all to your subjects - they're all in a deep shadow caused by underexposure, caused by an auto exposure system that is as dumb as a rock. It doesn't know what your subject is, and you didn't tell it what it was.

[griptape]

This would be a good time to use fill flash.

[gooble]

There're too many elements. Which is the focus. If it's the skater, which is most obvious, he's too small and not well lit.