Family of four by the pond

I took this in Downtown Birmingham for a client. I'm pretty happy with it. Haven't heard back from the client yet, but ideally, she's happy too.

What do y'all think?

Very nice picture.

Don't care for the color cast (sickly blue), the crop (feet cut off), or the vignetting. It also looks underexposed.

How would you have taken it?

Nice shot! could use less vignetting. I think warming up the image would give it a better feel by lighting the skies and trees in the background. (I.M.O.)

The capture is fine, provided you got some air under the feet. It's the processing that I have the problem with.

The original photo was pretty muddy-looking to begin with. I'm not very good with color processing. I'm working on that. Any tips?

YouTube is your friend. Work on your white balance. Are you shooting in raw?

Yes, I always shoot in RAW. As far as WB is concerned, I use a grey card when I shoot most of the time, but it usually doesn't help all that much--it usually makes the image too warm. I was considering getting an X-Rite Color Passport. :S

To me it looks a bit like a dystopian editorial shot. I don't know what the ambient was like that day, but your flash has so overpowered it, that it looks dismal and dark.

I'd mask off your subjects and kick up the brightness of the background, unless that's what you were going for. I did a quick and dirty and IMO, it looks much better (though since I'm doing it on a jpg, there are lots of artifacts).

This is one of those times where underexposing the ambient isnt helping. Because you have so much sky on esch side and its an unimpressive color/tone as processed. You might have had better luck with the ambient more closely matching the flssh. The other tough part is a standing family shot is nearly square. You have too much dead space on the sides, but it might feel a bit tight for verticsl framing. No easy answer other than considering a different pose. You might also try blurring the background a bit more.

That's kind of what I got from it too. The day was by no means a "happy" looking day. It was very gloomy and windy. I put a 2 stop ND filter on the lens to keep the flash from blowing out the subjects, but I was having a bit of trouble compensating the shutter speed, and I wanted a shallower DOF.

I've tried to bring up the background, but even in its 16-bit form, there's still some pretty obnoxious artifacting once curves are applied. I'll try to process it again to see if I can get better results the second time around, and I'll post back.

I agree with what everyone is saying about the lighting and colors, but nobody has mentioned the dad yet. He seems to be standing pretty far back from everyone else. Maybe having him put his hands on his wife and daughter's shoulders would make him seem more prominent and involved, instead of kinda lurking back there

This close pose could work well with portrait orientation.

The family won't notice the technical issues hopefully, because they all have great expressions/smiles and their perception of the image will be all tied up with the emotions. But the technical points already made are all valid ones. I too would crop this vertically, as the background is not attractive and they are dead center. A vertical crop might be better. I'm curious as to why you would choose such a low ISO for this image on this gloomy day. Does your flash have exposure compensation? Can you dial down the power at all with it? I'd clone out Mom's fly away hair as well, small point, but the devil is in the details. Working on the technical side, including post processing, will bring your work to the next level, it really will. they are a beautiful family, you got great smiles out of them!