CC and vote on crop

Time to give a little something to CC on, this is one of those pictures I started playing with then it became a challenge because it wasn't perfect but it grew on me so I tried different PP and crops.
You guys might think it needs to be scratched all together.

Here are my favorite PP versions so far and two different aspect ratios for framing.


It was a fun shoot with my daughter last fall and I got some really good shots but this one for some reason peaked my interest, just liked the candid pose and the way she happened to be about center frame and center railroad,

Please CC and pick the ration you like if either.

Original format

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I like the original...I like the sharper contrast between the sides/corners and her (as the subject of the photo). To me the extra "material" or rather environment around her doesn't take away from it but rather contributes to the overall presentation of it. The crop is very minimal and seems that you're attempting to "perfect" it by using the rails as the corner points. It's not bad, but the slightly crooked nature of the railroad ties relative to the bottom of the picture, her natural reaction to her playing contribute to the photo being more "natural" and "at the moment" without it being cropped. Ok long rant, but in short, the original photo looks great!

There is something weird going on with the PP in this shot. Can you post the original?

Crash, yeah I am the "weird" going on lol.
I have heavily slanted the photo, I wanted the warmth of fall to pop out and I have purposely given her a glow. However there was no digital blurring of any king, that’s the power of the 70-200L at 200 I wanted it almost dreamlike I darkened the edges ect., I could have went for a crisper sharp feel.

But I am interested in your thoughts so ill post original as well.


Original

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I hope you don't mind...

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g0ldenb0y55 wrote in post #10573343
I hope you don't mind...

LOL no I don't mind, however I am not in need of crop suggestions I probably took 350 shots of her in every framing imaginable. I just found that one photo to be oddly intriguing because of how it was framed and her jester.

I have several tight shots that were knock out; I liked the above for the spaciousness.

I like the first PP best, too. I like the more red tone (not the yellow as much.)

i really like the shot! can you tell me more about how you got those fall colors to come out? the original just looks flat but the pp makes it phenomenal

oceanbeast wrote in post #10574168
i really like the shot! Can you tell me more about how you got those fall colors to come out? the original just looks flat but the pp makes it phenomenal

Well thank you so much, I did quite a lot to this photo to be honest. Since it's my child and I had no agenda I wanted to go extreme on purpose. I did everything from selective saturation to warming filters.
I think in all I had several masked layers to mask different parts of the picture because he skin and shirt are so similar in color they got effected by almost everything I did.
I still am not happy with out her hands blend into the back ground but I started from scratch three times and still don't have it perfect
Again, the over all picture is overboard but it is done so to my taste.

Here is a shot of the process, I couldn't even fit all the layers in the screen shot.

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The original is fantastic, I just wish you had a tiny bit more ground bellow her feet.

what was wrong with the original that you felt that you had to do so much PP on it?

I liked the unprocessed image better

BigAlz1 wrote in post #10574305
Since it's my child and I had no agenda I wanted to go extreme on purpose

I felt that summed it up. I have the origianl still as well

I like the second one best.as is.

Her sitting on the rail

Out of the first crops you posted, I like the first the most. I also like the picture of her sitting on the rail, edit away.

Flo wrote in post #10575085
I like the second one best.as is.

Her sitting on the rail

I think I do, too, mainly because of the crop. Not so close to her feet. The DOF is awfully shallow in these, so she is fairly soft, but I would straighten up the sitting pose, crop a little more off the top and bottom and go with that one.