A cute Girl.

[mvidal]

Hello all
I am a long time lurker in this forums, but this is actually my first post.

The story behind the picture.
This picture was taken during my last hour or so in Praha, I was on my way back to the airport, taking some last photos.
The child just stopped in from of me, actually posing for the camera, I had a nice laugh, because she refused to move, after several requests from the mother to do so, and eventually moved after I got the photo done.

Off course I did asked permission to take the shoot to the mother and even offered a print, if she would want it, but sadly was not easy to communicate with her. It ended with a nice smile, from both the child and the mother.

I like the image, but it seems it misses something, any c&c would be appreciated.

Exif Data:

F-Stop 5.6
Exposure 1/250 maybe 1/200
Iso 200
Focal Length 50 mm

Lens : Lensbaby Composer

[jiro]

Street photography is difficult. For one thing, you have to nail everything right because the shot can only happen once to capture the expression that you saw. The immediate thing that I noticed on your shot was that the girl is centered in the frame giving it less dynamism. Also, she simply fades in the background though she's at the center because her brightness is almost the same as the surrounding. Another would be what we call as "raccoon eyes" where the eyes are a bit darker than necessary.

It would be hard to re-position her on the 1/3 focal lines. I would probably re-position her at the left side of the frame to have the man on the right as my secondary subject but I guess we could but not as clean as it could be. My other suggestion would be to brighten up the girl specially the eyes to show her expression more. I'll see if I can show you my idea in an edit later.

One last thing, I have no idea whether you are a gentleman or a lady since your first name was not specified on your profile. Thanks.

[Dave Humphries]

Hello all
I am a long time lurker in this forums, but this is actually my first post.

The story behind the picture.
This picture was taken during my last hour or so in Praha, I was on my way back to the airport, taking some last photos.
The child just stopped in from of me, actually posing for the camera, I had a nice laugh, because she refused to move, after several requests from the mother to do so, and eventually moved after I got the photo done.

Off course I did asked permission to take the shoot to the mother and even offered a print, if she would want it, but sadly was not easy to communicate with her. It ended with a nice smile, from both the child and the mother.

I like the image, but it seems it misses something, any c&c would be appreciated.

Exif Data:

F-Stop 5.6
Exposure 1/250 maybe 1/200
Iso 200
Focal Length 50 mm

Lens : Lensbaby Composer

Hi Marco,

Welcome to the CiC forums from me, great to have you join us.

I hope you don't mind but I had a little play with your small jpg (I'm making excuses there already for it not being a very good result);


I recropped and rotated,
upsized a bit (a mistake in hindsight),
brightened her skin tones,
dimmed, desaturated, cloned and smudge various backround distractions (some not too successfully )
sharpened

I'm not too happy with the result, but I learnt from 'having a go'

I hope you find it useful too,

[mvidal]

Hello Jiro.
Thank for your feedback, it was really nice.
I've updated my profile now

Like you said, was a street shoot, the sweet spot of the lens was aiming more or less at the middle, hence I did the shooting like it was. Never the less its really nice to read other people thoughts about an image.

Marco

[jiro]

Here is what I came up with on the edit, Marco:



I hope I did not offend you, Sir.

[mvidal]

Hi Marco,

Welcome to the CiC forums from me, great to have you join us.

I hope you don't mind but I had a little play with your small jpg (I'm making excuses there already for it not being a very good result);

I recropped and rotated,
upsized a bit (a mistake in hindsight),
brightened her skin tones,
dimmed, desaturated, cloned and smudge various backround distractions (some not too successfully )
sharpened

I'm not too happy with the result, but I learnt from 'having a go'

I hope you find it useful too,

Hello Dave, loved what you did to her skin tones, to be honest, in the original ( not downsized ) picture her skin tones are a bit better, but still to dark, and also the eyes are to dark.
Could you gime a brief description of what you did ?

Yes, its always useful to "hear" other's opinions, thank you.

[Dave Humphries]

Hello Dave, loved what you did to her skin tones, to be honest, in the original ( not downsized ) picture her skin tones are a bit better, but still to dark, and also the eyes are to dark.
Could you gime a brief description of what you did ?

Yes, its always useful to "hear" other's opinions, thank you.

Hi Marco,

I started with several wipes of the Dodge tool over her skin, but her right eye starts to go too red in colour (especially with sharpening), so I desaturated that somewhat.

But with CS5, Elements, or GIMP, there are many, many ways to do things and I'm no expert.
e.g. I could have done it with layers and masks, etc.

Hi Willie,

I like yours better, especially as you have recomposed the background to position the guy better

Cheers,

[Antonio Correia]

Another Portuguese Welcome compatriot

Bem vindo a este forum Marco

[mvidal]

Obrigado

Thank you all for the replies.