Portrait attempt

[Greg_Nuspel]

I shot this 'portrait' and I would like to know what you think of the treatment.

[Richard]

I like this shot, it's a nice comfortable pose.

The buggy in the first shot is a little distracting, so it's good to see it removed in shot 2. The other distraction for me is the sign on the bench. which shouldn't be to hard to clone out.

The soft 'almost glowing' processing works for me. It's a good shot.

[Marko]

I much prefer shot 1, the soft focus of shot 2, looks very dated to my eye.

In terms of critique, I like the warm expressions of all 3 subjects, nice.
The cropping is off here though; you are slicing through fingers, and the pose looks a bit messy. If this were my shot, I would likely have bunched their heads together (made them the same height) and focused on all three faces.
Also, many distractions here to my eye; the tree right behind the adult's head, the plaque on the bench, and the stroller in the bkgd. Unless this was a casual shot of strangers, I would have taken a few minutes to look for these distractions and fix them.

Of course I'm seeing this shot with a critical eye; I'd bet hard that all 3 subjects will be happy with the shot.
Hope that helps - Marko

[Mad Aussie]

I tend to agree with Marko's comments on this one. The softness has robbed the detail and texture. Some layer masking would have been my technique to get that softness where I wanted it but retain the texture in the timber, hair etc where it strengthens the shot.

Simply moving mum and the taller child to our left would have covered that plaque.

Shots like this are hard though aren't they! Unless everyone involved is prepared to actually take the time to pose and sit through several shots, it's really just a quick snap in the end so you get trees growing out of heads etc. The fact the stroller was in the background suggests to me this was more an impromptu shot as opposed to a real portrait attempt.

[Greg_Nuspel]

Yes I see what you mean. I don't know who these people are, we were on a photo club scavenger hunt and I needed a shot of some nice people. I took two frames and their ride pulled up so they had to go. I do have to pay much more attention to what is in the frame the hands are so obvious, I'll fix the soft crap I added. Thanks guys.

[Matt K.]

I am a bit flustered. In all honesty I thought it was one and the same shot, with the second being the one that had been treated. I seriously believed that Greg photo-shopped the buggy in the background out, cropped the image, and softened the picture up on purpose.

One thing that my dad taught me is: never have the subjects lean back. For one reason or another it messes with their faces; have them instead leaning slightly forward, this way the focus is more on the faces then it would be on the body. And one other thing: have your subjects look over your shoulder, not directly into the camera, if you can avoid it. Not sure why my dad was always so intense about that ... maybe another portrait photographer can answer that.

Other than that, I like the light, and all the other stuff can be photo-shopped. I mean the sign on the bench, the birdhouse in the background and so on, wherever you would want to go with that. Personally, I like the sharper image better, except for the distractions.

[jlabel]

I liked the first picture, tho the cart brand is a bit problematic you could just clone that out and under the lady eyes, you should soften the shadow by cloning 50% opacity