Missing Baby Teeth

[Mike Buckley]

My niece recently lost her two front baby teeth, so her mother wanted to make sure I got a photo of her smile when we went to a park for a family outing. The stuff on the top of her head is a hood, not a head of hair that is prematurely grey.


Mike's Version 1

[RBSinTo]

Mike,
I like the shot and don't mind the grain ("noise" to the Digivolk), but am curious as to why it appears.
Is this a severe crop or a shot made with a phone?
Robert

My niece recently lost her two front baby teeth, so her mother wanted to make sure I got a photo of her smile when we went to a park for a family outing. The stuff on the top of her head is a hood, not a prematurely grey head of hair.

[madcrow]

Nice smile, image and model.

[Mike Buckley]

Thanks, guys!

Robert: The shot was captured on a Nikon D7000 and is cropped only on the sides to change the aspect ratio from 4 x 6 to 8 x 10. The characteristic you notice is probably due to using ISO 6400. Over exposing the raw file 3/4 stop and then lowering the exposure during post-processing might have contributed to it, but my experience is that raising the exposure during post-processing produces that characteristic more noticeably and more often.

I used aperture priority set to f/11. That's because I was using an 85mm prime lens on a crop factor body relatively close to the subject and wanted almost everything if not everything in the frame to be in focus. Even so, notice that the hood in the top right corner is out of focus. I also used Auto ISO set to a maximum ISO of 6400 and a minimum shutter speed of 1/500. That speed was usually necessary because of the unexpected, quick motions of her and her two siblings, especially in their activities that I was photographing all afternoon. The camera couldn't achieve the proper exposure with those parameters, so it automatically reduced the shutter speed to 1/160. Fortunately, that slower shutter speed still made it possible to stop the action in this particular scene and was barely fast enough for me to hold the camera steady. All of that is to explain why I resorted to using ISO 6400.

[FootLoose]

Cute picture, Mike. One for her to look back on in later life.

[Shadowman]

Nice shot.

[rpcrowe]

Mike, did you want the noise as an aspect to your portrait. If not, some simple noise reduction might remove some of that noise.

I copied the image using the snip it tool, opened it in Photoshop CC and then used the Dfine filter of the NIK Software to remove some of the noise. This is certainly not the best way to use Dfine but, it did clear up some noise.

[Mike Buckley]

I'm impressed with what you accomplished, Richard, considering that the sharpening and noise were already baked into the image. Even so, I prefer the look of the original because the lesser refinement speaks to me that this is a little girl playing outside, whereas your version speaks to me more as a psuedo fashion shot where the skin quality doesn't fit the look of the hair in front of her eyes. Having said that, I think I might prefer another version more that uses less sharpening on the skin tones. I'll try that out and post it here if the outcome seems satisfactory.

The funny thing is that nobody in her family would even notice any of these differences that we're discussing. The differences seem rather significant to us but to the typical casual observer they seem so subtle nobody would care. Heck, they might even wonder why anyone would spend the time required to make the changes.

[rpcrowe]

You are certainly correct in that probably no one would notice many of the facets of images that we discuss on CiC such as noise, tilted horizons, rule of thirds and so on...

[skitterbug]

I like the pic and the freckles! She is a really special little lady!

[Mike Buckley]

I checked the master image (the raw file) and noticed that it has the exact look that I prefer. It is different from the first photo I uploaded to here. That's because I made the smaller, uploaded photo using a batch process that adds sharpening to the entire downsized file. That works 99% of the time, which explains why I don't check downsized images with the same critical eye that I use when evaluating the master file. However, that process doesn't work for this image.

So, I custom downsized the image shown below and didn't add any sharpening to the skin tones. This image looks almost exactly the same as my master image when toggling back and forth between them. Notice that the skin is smoother than in the first image but not as smooth as in Richard's image. This is the look I prefer.


Mike's Version 2

[Mike Buckley]

Thank you, Sandy!

[mugge]

Mike, you have captured the little lady beautifully. The tight framing and natural skin tones did it for me.
Cheers Ole

[bnnrcn]

What a beautiful lady ! Very nice image Mike, your second version looks great

[rpcrowe]

I definitely like your second image best....

[Mike Buckley]

Thank you to Ole and Binnur!

[Rita]

What a cute little gal. I also like your second image.