C&C On Candids Please

These shots were all taken with my 300d and 50mm f/1.4. My 300d is resting in pieces, but I'm still enjoying finishing up all the post processing on the shots I took with it after I got my 50mm!

Please let me know how I could improve these candid shots either through post, or original. I only recently started shooting RAW, so these all came of the camera in JPG's, but all have gotten some post work in Lightroom.

1. Shooting mode: AV, 1/500, f/2.5, ISO 400, No flash. PP Steps Taken: Reduced clarity, recovered some blown highlights, mainly along his back where the water was coming down on him. Increased contrast slightly. Slight cropping. What I like about this one is the overall look/feel of the water and captured him well and his spirit of that day. What I don't like is lack of sharpness on the main subject, and I think the framing is all wrong. I would have preferred a less centered composure, and could crop it slightly to get that but I would be missing parts of my son that I want to keep!

These look good except for the skin tones, they have the look of a boiled lobster.

corkneyfonz wrote in post #11119234
These look good except for the skin tones, they have the look of a boiled lobster.

The captures look good, but they havent been helped much by the post work. Somewhere in all the pushing and pulling to retain highlights, but increase contrast, your colors are off and I think its hurt your sharpness to a degree. It might be that if you keep the post simple, levels adjustment and tweak the curves you might end up with a better shot.

corkneyfonz wrote in post #11119234
These look good except for the skin tones, they have the look of a boiled lobster.

haha That's certainly not the look I'm going for! Thanks for getting me thinking about what damage I had actually done in the PP trying to get certain elements looking right.In the second picture, she is rather red in those photos, her skin was recovering from a sharp drop in humidity which made for very dry, even scaly. In my attempts to lessen that impact I made it worse for sure! In trying to get her beautiful blue eyes to show, I ended up turning them a sort of green that they aren't really.

In the first, yeah I sun burned him!!! He wouldn't appreciate that

Here are the two images as they came off the camera. No PP done other than resizing.

1.

Wow that's so much better.

Much better ..I like the concept of the second, but the DOF just misses, just me.
THe composition of the first cuts off too many bits for me.

Flo wrote in post #11119734
Much better ..I like the concept of the second, but the DOF just misses, just me.
THe composition of the first cuts off too many bits for me.

I agree with the first for sure! I'm not to pleased with the composition, he was holding a big ball down over the slip n' slide and stopping the water, it actually would have been a good time for me to be a couple yards back to capture more. That was my first time working with a prime instead of a zoom, so I was certainly getting used to a fixed 50mm haha

What's bad, is those are just off the camera JPG's, and all my PP time, which I did spend a lot of time trying to make colors 'pop' more and such, ended up killing my poor kids! Certainly a lesson to be learned here.

Kids are a tough nut! THis hobby is all about learning and having some fun in the process...you have great models

I have six from 1.5 years to 17 years... hardest part? Getting them all stationary and smiling with eyes open in unison! haha

Ephur wrote in post #11119853
I have six from 1.5 years to 17 years... hardest part? Getting them all stationary and smiling with eyes open in unison! haha

Yikes! Lol...I do not envy you the family portrait!

I agree that they look better without any PP

With the first shot, I would have tried to move out so you can see this slip n slide thing that you're talking about. Or if there was time (which I know there wasn't, he's a kid after all) switched to an ultra wide angle lens and tried to center the attention of the shot around the center of the action, which is the ball. Your son is holding the ball, the ball is sitting on the slip and slide, and the ball is spraying the water upwards. Even though your son is your center of attention, that doesn't mean that he should always be the shot's center of attention . Then again, because I wasn't there, I don't know how well that would have worked, and if you've never used a UWA lens it's kind of hard to picture...but at least it gives you some ideas to try

With the second, I just think it needs a little more DOF to get the whole face in focus and it's good. As for her eye color.... I dunno, but the exposure looks fine. Maybe you could have gone a 1/3 stop more but that's it. You could always use a mask on the eyes in photoshop and adjust them separately to bring the color out more.

Mayniyak wrote in post #11119945
I agree that they look better without any PP

With the first shot, I would have tried to move out so you can see this slip n slide thing that you're talking about. Or if there was time (which I know there wasn't, he's a kid after all) switched to an ultra wide angle lens and tried to center the attention of the shot around the center of the action, which is the ball. Your son is holding the ball, the ball is sitting on the slip and slide, and the ball is spraying the water upwards. Even though your son is your center of attention, that doesn't mean that he should always be the shot's center of attention . Then again, because I wasn't there, I don't know how well that would have worked, and if you've never used a UWA lens it's kind of hard to picture...but at least it gives you some ideas to try

With the second, I just think it needs a little more DOF to get the whole face in focus and it's good. As for her eye color.... I dunno, but the exposure looks fine. Maybe you could have gone a 1/3 stop more but that's it. You could always use a mask on the eyes in photoshop and adjust them separately to bring the color out more.

Thanks for sharing your thoughts Mayniyak! I agree with the framing, I'm getting more used to foot zooming now That picture was actually taken with a rental 50mm 1.4 while I decided if I really wanted to spend the 350 on it vs. the nifty fifty. I ended up buying it, but am still working to improve my ability to get shots with the primes. It's a lot different than just spinning the zoom ring for sure. I'm finding that overall it is making me a lot more thoughtful about where I stand and how I compose shots, even when I'm using my zooms I'm paying more attention to where I am relative to my subjects which has been helping a lot.

I also appreciate the feedback about considering what the primary subject in the picture is. I tend to gravitate towards my kids, always select a focus point lined up with their eyes, and shoot at that. I should probably pick some subjects other than my kids when I'm trying to work on that composition, might be easier to not keep sliding right back to them hehe

I find that I usually am struggling with getting great colors from the eyes in my kids (who are my primary subjects). I've been trying different apertures, exposures, and unless I shoot light into their eyes or have the sun beating down on them I'm not quite sure how to reproduce the deep and true eye colors.

I am thinking maybe it has something to do with my glass, but I have the same issue on all four of my lenses, and I know that other people are able to get good colors with the 50mm 1.4, so I figure my technique has got to be part of it