Summer at the park - C&C please

My wife (Summer) and I decided to head to a small "park" yesterday and take some photos of her in front of a fountain. Please let me know what could be improved on these shots. I just started shooting with a DSLR a couple months ago and just recently purchased a couple nice lenses. These photos were with a 18-200 f/3.5 IS. It was very cloudy out and looked like rain, but never did. I didn't have a CPL filter on (purchased one and its on the way), so all of the photos with sky look very blown out. None of these have had any PP done to them. I've only resized them.

1. I already see in this one that I chopped off her fingers...

Byte size: ZERO | Content warning: NOT AN IMAGE

Byte size: ZERO | Content warning: NOT AN IMAGE

Byte size: ZERO | Content warning: NOT AN IMAGE

Colors look good, but they seem a bit soft, like you missed the focus on her face. But otherwise, not bad at all

Given that you have "image editing ok", I did some quick adjustments to your photos... just to give them some pop. (they were low res, so I could only do so much)

1.

Soliz387 wrote in post #7980615
Colors look good, but they seem a bit soft, like you missed the focus on her face. But otherwise, not bad at all

yeah, I'm still working on getting the focusing correct. I did get it closer in the later ones, but these were more towards the beginning.

Yeah, we tried working on that. Not sure how to get her to keep them open other than toothpicks. Would a scrim above her help out with the squinting?

I'm decent in PS and LR, but I wanted to post these before an PP were done so I was basing the feedback on the actual shot and not what I can accomplish afterwards. I like the edits you made.

To avoid the squinting problem ensure the subject isn't looking directly into the sun. They can still be posed facing the sun but have them look in another direction without turning their head. Hope this makes sense, maybe someone else can do a better job of explaining if not.

cerveza4lu wrote in post #7982229
To avoid the squinting problem ensure the subject isn't looking directly into the sun. They can still be posed facing the sun but have them look in another direction without turning their head. Hope this makes sense, maybe someone else can do a better job of explaining if not.

The sun was actually behind her at the time that these photos were taken.

I have to agree with what others have said and I think Julie's edits have added that extra contrast which was lacking in the originals.

An additional point though, you're shutter speed is way too low for #1 - 1/80 @ 200mm - the IS no doubt helped but it doesn't work well with moving subjects - hence the slightly soft face and obvious shake in her hands. At 200mm you should have been shooting around 1/320 or faster.

Hi,

I agree with the above too; remember to keep the shutter speed at at least 1.5 times the focal length to avoid any blur from camera shake. I do like the pose in the second one but not sure of the lamppost!

David

beegeeboy wrote in post #7984418
Hi,

I agree with the above too; remember to keep the shutter speed at at least 1.5 times the focal length to avoid any blur from camera shake. I do like the pose in the second one but not sure of the lamppost!

David

I haven't purchased a decent flash yet, so I was going without anything for these shots. If I upped the shutter speed, everything was really blown out. I'm still messing around with all the settings.

I really like the pose also, but I agree about the lamppost. There were 2 before this that had the post growing from her head! I quickly realized that, but we didn't move far enough away obviously