My 4 year old cousin

Taken today spur of the moment, like almost every picture I take! I'd love to actually sit down with someone for an hour and shoot.

1.

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Looks to me like the tree is more in focus than his face in #1... #2 looks a tad dark, but maybe it's my screen. Cute boy, though!

Any others?

The composition in #1 does not work. only verticals, and no use of the rule of the thirds.
and the black sweater does add very much to the picture.
I like #2 better.

OL9245 wrote in post #4206096
The composition in #1 does not work. only verticals, and no use of the rule of the thirds.
and the black sweater does add very much to the picture.
I like #2 better.

What do you mean by "only verticals" and "no use of 1/3s"? Portraits should only be vertical? Also, his face is 1/3 across the picture. Are you saying it's not at 1/3 or I shouldn't be framing it 1/3?

Didn't have a choice on what he was wearing, btw! These are the only two pictures I took of him. These were at a family get together.

Does not look to me like he broke the rule of thirds. Hes fine where he is. The first one actually worked best for me. His face is a little bright but thats fine and easily fixed if its not. The thing thats nice about the first one over the second is the DOF OOF blur helps in the first but is hardly existent in the second.

The second one looks like teh rule of thirds was broken. also the background is very distracting to me.

I like the black turtleneck. Its somewhat sophisticated and very simple and non-distracting.

Nice job man.

Thought this might help. This is #1 straight off the camera, just a resize for posting.

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Now the original does break the rule of thirds. The edit was fine cept for a little bright of a face.

mrludecrs wrote in post #4206188
What do you mean by "only verticals"

The tree is straight vertical. Either is the boy. So the composition does not work. You are lacking a diagonal somewhere.

mrludecrs wrote in post #4206188
and "no use of 1/3s"? Portraits should only be vertical? Also, his face is 1/3 across the picture. Are you saying it's not at 1/3 or I shouldn't be framing it 1/3?

You are right the face is at the third. But IMHO the comp does not work because aside to the tree is an empty space which do not participate to the construction. I know this is all subjective. I'm just doing my best to understand why the picture does not work to me. Sometimes I can put it in words, and I am glad to share them. Sometimes I just thing "does not work" with no clear explanation and I dont post any comment cause I feel useless to send unconstructive negative comments.

mrludecrs wrote in post #4206188
Didn't have a choice on what he was wearing, btw! These are the only two pictures I took of him. These were at a family get together.

Of course most of the times we get what we are given. I cannot criticize. It is just a mater of facts which made you picture more difficult to work.

elow is a quick crop of the picture with the tree. I have cut the empty space to make it less "vertical". Also cut the lovely colors at the BG so the dark sweater fits more in the picture. Hope this helps to understand my point.

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OL9245 - Thank you for the explanation. It's this type of useful, constructive criticism that makes this site such a great resource for me. It seems like every time I post, I have another "ah ha" moment.

I'm going to play around with your crop here, but I do feel terrible losing that BG!

In an ideal world, I would have had him stand just to the right of the tree (camera view) had better fall clothes on and did the shot vertical.