Sophia Starr

[jamn4ex]

This is 12 day old Sophia.



C&C welcomed!

[ShaneS]

What and alert and lovely little girl! I like her positioning in the frame and the fact that she made eye contact with you makes this an engaging portrait IMHO. Her hand looks a tad sharper than her face and I find it a bit distracting so I wonder if you can soften that up a bit or, alternatively, consider a square crop?

[jamn4ex]

will try to fix that Shane now that you mention it it glares at me ty.

[NorthernFocus]

That's an awesome shot, James. Cute as a button.

[bnnrcn]

Lovely

[Shadowman]

Nice.

[deetheturk]

Beautiful James!

[rpcrowe]

Lovely image of a darling little girl. I suspect that you shot this with available light at a wide aperure and that your camera selected the portion of the baby closest to the lens on which to focus.

Perhaps, you might select the baby's eyes for your main focus. How to do this would depend on the camera with which you are shooting.

Another option is to use bounce flash which will not hurt the baby's eyesand will allow you to use a slightly smaller aperture (with correspondingly greater DOF). The flash could also provide a bit better color balance (but this can be done in PP).

OTOH, a bit of PP sharpening seems to help the baby's face. I also reduce the brightness of the blanket in the foreground. I did not take the time to balance the color - it still seems a bit on the warm or reddish side to me...


Ever since Donald introduced me to the WhiBal target to get my color balance within the ball park, I have tried to include the target in most series of shots. I did fool with the image using levels to correct the color but, my wife is scolding me because I must getready for rescue event and cannot further play with the image.

[Brownbear]

Beautiful!

[jamn4ex]

Thank you all.
Richard I used two Lowell totems with 500 watt bulbs in them shot through umbrellas, had them set about 6or 8 feet away from Sophia. I also bounced my flash off wall or ceiling. I was probably shooting wide open (for some reason through the course of shooting I keep finding myself wide open, maybe because all the lenses I have are telephoto primes).
My concerns of white balance have always been let the camera pick it. ( I suppose I really need to address setting wb manually in order to reach further heights in my photography.
I guess I have a lot to learn about adding light .
I thank you for your attentions Richard, The fact that I caught the attention of a photographer of your caliber means a lot to me.

[rpcrowe]

James...

The focus, after a bit of sharpening, seems O.K.

I most often shoot in RAW with the camera set at auto white balance. I will then select a neutral colored portion of the subject (the WhiBal card is great) and adjust the white balance from there.

When you are shooting with the Lowel and flash, you are mixing the daylight of th e flash with the 3200K of the Lowel. Perhaps, you might think of placing an amber gel over your flash to reduce that light from about 5500-6000K (or thereabouts) to 3200K. Than when you have all your light sources at the same temperature, it can be quite easy (at times) to adjust the color of your image.

I hope this is not too simplistic but, I used to adjust my color temperature in one of several ways:

Adjust in Camera RAW using white eye dropper or the color temperature slider

or

1. Select adjustment layer>levels and then use one of the color picker eye droppers
or
2. Select adjustment layers>levels and the click on the RGB drop down menu which will allow you to adjust the Red-Green-Blue levels independently.

I don't do this anymore because NIK Viveza has this capability built into it along with the capability of selectively choosing the areas I want to adjust...

I have the advantage when shooting my white Maltese dogs in that their white coats are built-in color targets...

[jamn4ex]

Richard I think I had my camera choose the focus point with a zone mode. I just got this 7D and I am not really familiar with all these focus options . With my T2i I usually used the center point. Same with the 50 D.
When using lights such as the lowells should I change my 'normal' metering. Here I think I used evaluated metering. When I shoot wildlife I almost always used spot metering. ALso will any white card do? Guess I need to get back in the books. lol .Thank you for all your help.