Pls Help With Portrait

This is one of my sons, and he is usually incredibly hard to shoot as he doesn't sit still for more than a second, and has a hard time producing a genuine smile on command. Yesterday I had my kids out in the backyard, and they were jumping in leaves, so I began shooting. I snapped these terrific shots of my son, but I'm using an uncalibrated monitor, and I am not sure, but I think his face is too white? I tried to use LR3 to correct it a bit, but I wasn't happy with the results - the auto function seemed to dark and heavy to me, and when I toyed with it myself, I think I made things worse....

So tell me, should I just use these they way they are, or should I be attempting some sort of fix for these? Any feedback appreciated, and of course, if you want to take a stab at any kind of Post Processing on these, by all means!

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Looks overexposed. Your highlights are blown. Try dropping the exposure by about 2/3 to a full stop, reduce your highlights and increase contrast a bit. Color tone and temp seem fine to me. Great shots. Real genuine smile, you can tell he's a happy kid.

The rest of us aren't going to see what you see because we have no reality to compare it to. I really don't see much wrong with the images as far as skin tone.

In reality, he is a very pale skinned kid most of the time.

We're definitely printing and framing these once we're sure the tones are correct, and when we figure out what sizes!

Agree with a previous comment about 1/3 to 2/3 over exposed. This will pull back by reducing highlights. You then may need to try nudging the contrast up a notch and see if that just pushes some color.

I wouldn't say there is much wrong with these images straight out of the camera. 10 seconds of post and they'll be fixed.

I think the second one is perfectly exposed and I quite like the first one as it is, even though it is probably technically overexposed.. It might have been better if the colour section of the background had extended all of the way up?

shep207 wrote in post #15098263
I think the second one is perfectly exposed and I quite like the first one as it is, even though it is probably technically overexposed.. It might have been better if the colour section of the background had extended all of the way up?

I think that's what's bothering me about the first one. I often like slightly overexposed backgrounds in certain situations, but the strong light at the top right of the frame is distracting.

My comments were directed at the first photo. The second one is perfect, maybe drop the highlights a tad to reduce the glare on his cheeks and bring out some more detail .

Second one looks good as is. Here is my take on the first one:

Reduced Exposure .75, bumped contrast 16. The reduction in exposure exposed a severe shadow line on the next so some selective dodge, burn and blur in PS to make it disappear. Also some burn on the BG to push it back a bit.

IMAGE LINK: http://www.flickr.com …/88324835@N05/8​071356839/

Did you shoot raw? The first image is overexposed and simply reducing exposure in post will not fix it because all three RGB channels are blown (see his left cheeck and the left side of his neck). You'd have a chance at recovering the channels if you shot raw but a JPEG is quite limited in the amount of data it holds.

I only shoot RAW - but I'm not talented in photoshop at all!
Northwoods - I kinda like how you corrected it! I love how you explained step by step what all you did! That is a huge help! Thanks!

Upload the raw file to a site like mediafire.com and post the link here and I'll edit it.