Diffcult reception

Wedding was at the justice of the peace. Two days before the reception the bride asked me to take pictures. . . I know, never do this for friends. But I'm a sucker. I was looking for help with the attached picture. With difficult grounds to work with I came up with a shade tree and a semi harmless background. I'm interested in what I could have done to make this better.

Ok, now I feel retarded. I attached a jpg picture and it does not show. Help!

Well for now go to this link

I think it looks good already. I would probably bump up the saturation and contrast slightly though.
Another good tip is to use a flash (preferably external) for fill so you can have a properly exposed background and foreground when in the shade.

Last evening, I had a similar issue, a red-headed, very fair skinned woman and her husband was darkly tanned and appeared to be from a middle-eastern background. What I had to do was shoot from a slightly angled position with the camera in portrait position and the flash to the side of the man. This evened out the skin color nicely.

I don't know if they original composition could have been done any better. The photo is actually quite nice. I think that some extra post-processing would make it really nice though.

I am not sure if this is what you were going for but here is something that I like to do with photos like this.

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No offence Crusher, but I prefer the first one, or maybe one somewhere in the middle.

Yeah. You are probably right. I think that at the very least some extra saturation would be cool. I tend to go overboard....LOL!

I like Crusher420's version. Maybe a little dodge/burn to retain the details around the flowers, though. Or less exposure adjustment? But it's heading in a good direction for sure.

Maybe it's cheating, but a little selective coloring of the flowers wouldn't hurt. Or just selectively increase their saturation.

You are so right about the burn tool. I am sure that someone on here will do a better job on this one!

I love the skin tones on crusher's version.
If you could keep the flower detail of the original, and combine with the skin tone on crusher's, I think it would be perfect.

First thing that popped in my mind as I saw your PS'd version. Personally I'd put your version over the original and just move the opacity slider in the top layer and stop when it looks best. I often do that with my images too.

I added a duplicate layer on Overlay blend mode at 24% opacity. A slight levels adjustment, USM, and Neat Image.

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Now that is impressive!

great job mgbeach imho.
Rob.

Showoff!! LOL!!

Actually that is a very nice job....see...I knew someone would come up with something better!

Thanks guy! good input.

I printed the original and it looks great. I like what mgbeach has done, which is a meld of alot of input. I guess I'm to much of a traditionalist that wants to get it right out of the camera, like the old film days.

I did like the original because it is fairly true to the look and color she had. But after the mgbeach post I can see that I could have improved it with some saturation. I'm not sure about the blur, I tried it and thought her makeup was already giving her that hollywood look. I found out later that she had it professionally done. I'm still need to work on blur, I always seem to put to much on it.

During a wedding one might shot in excess of 400 pictures. Do I want to spend a lot of time on PS? I guess I still want to get it right in the shot so I don't have to do much later.

Also, after I printed it, I though I should have PS'd the mustach area of the groom. Oh well, live and learn.

Thanks again to all for your input.