First Baptism - C/C please!

[Apexer]

A little background; I thought I would have my digital camera maybe a year before tackling this kind of thing, but a friend of my wifes saw my personal pics on Facebook and basically insisted I shoot her sons Baptism. As with a young, tight budgeted couple who needed engagements, I insisted on shooting for free, and told them both "I am NOT a pro." They went into it with open eyes. I did end up making a little under $50.00 on prints ordered thru Zenfolio so far.

That said, I am highly motivated to improve and my goal is to be a pro caliber photographer when I retire in about 10 years. So...please let me have it between the eyes.

No flash used at all until after the ceremony out of respect for the conservative nature of the church. RAW/DPP/PS 7.0 with an uncalibrated monitor ( it is now though ).

Slideshow/gallery - http://www.crollhausphotography.com/p889653637

My fav of the ceremony itself
http://www.crollhausphotography.com/img/v6/p777979143-4.jpg

Flash image picked at random - Av mode / ETTL / Vertical w diffuser
http://www.crollhausphotography.com/img/v6/p413962290-4.jpg

[aram535]

Well your WB is off it seems, a little too warm. To fix -- use a gray card pre-shooting or find a white piece of paper and set a custom WB in camera in the light of the room.

The horizon on the first one is WAY off -- use better posture when you take the photo and/or fix it in photoshop.

Last piece of advise would be when you take a photo of people vertical usually gives you better composure than horizontal... obviously if they fit -- don't force it.

[Apexer]

Thank you, aram - Posture was not possible, as I was confined to the pew. I should ahve noticed that and strightened in PS -THANKS

[Zoltan]

Did a little color adjusting, hope you don't mind. I needed to adjust the horizon a bit more in #2 but you get the idea of where I was headed.

Nice pictures!

[Apexer]

Thanks, Zoltan, but number one looks like the skin tones are way off. Number two looks great. THANKS. I calibrated my monitor this morning, maybe somebody else can confirm what I am seeing.

[Zoltan]

Maybe this is better, I needed to use a mask to isolate the people from the background. A few more adjustments and I think it would improve.

Again nice photos Apexer.

[Bill Boehme]

I like Zoltan's edits and think that the the first two were very good in fixing the overall white balance. The slight blue in the skin tones are just a minor thing.

Your first image that was done without flash was rather easy to white balance, but straightening it posed a bit of a problem because it meant cutting off some of the image. Here is my edit which was done mostly in ACR to adjust WB and do some minor tonal tweaking. The colors still seemed too saturated after white balancing so I also reduced the saturation primarily in the skin tones.


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The second image in which flash was used was somewhat more of a challenge since different parts of the scene were illuminated from different sources. The background was mainly incandescent while the foreground was more problematic since it was a mixture that was primarily flash with some areas receiving more incandescent lighting. Colored filters over the flash are a good solution for indoor lighting situations like this. A yellow filter is used with incandescent lighting and a green filter is used with fluorescent lighting. I used layer masks to apply different WB corrections to different parts of the image.


346564

[Apexer]

Bah. Thank you guys...I have sooo much to learn. = )

Those look great. Honestly I thought I didnt have WB correction in PP, I tried to manipulate it, but couldnt. I will have to go back in there. This was my first try at RAW/DPP/LR on a larger scale.

[USER876]

I recently shot a baptism too, no flash, and my pictures looked similar. A quick white balance fix really made a big difference.
http://lh5.ggpht.com/_pI858HPu_js/SZEOLkb9VJI/AAAAAAAADQY/6C_QZ0-mTV4/s800/IMG_2165_WEB.JPG

http://lh5.ggpht.com/_pI858HPu_js/SZEOW8DAYDI/AAAAAAAADSM/1ouTzlWXtLY/s800/IMG_2203_WEB.JPG