Our Cowgirl

[Normo]

Here is a photo I took of my daughter. Could you please take a look and give some feedback, please be gentle as I am very new to this.

[Donald]

Norm

I'm not looking at this on my own monitor (which always carries a health warning), but my first reactions are:

• Good idea. You got down to her height and didn't make that mistake of being an adult shooting downwards on a child.
• That van in the background is a killer. We always need to pay as much attrention to the background as we do to the main subject.
• It looks to me as if it's a little soft; i.e. could do with a bit more sharpening. Don't know if you've got into reading about sharpening yet as part of post processing. It's one of the essentials. Did you shoot this as a RAW file or a JPEG? What you need to do about sharpening differs depending on how you shot it.

[Normo]

Thanks for the reply Donald. What do you suggest re the van other than not shooting with it there? Thanks so much for the info regarding sharpening I will look into that as well.
Regards,
Norm.

[Donald]

What do you suggest re the van other than not shooting with it there?

That's the best answer. But, again, once /if you're someone with post processing skills and can use layers and masks, you could blur that van out of all recognition and keep your daughter as sharp as you see her at the moment.

[Manfred M]

Norm - just to add to Donald's excellent comments.

1. Your daughter is the subject. Anything that takes our attention away from the subject is something we don't want to see in the image. In this case, the van door fits that description. In this case, a square crop and repositioning the subject might help,

2. I find that images work best if there is room in front of where the subject is looking (out of the frame). Again a bit of cropping and repositioning can do wonders here.

3. I find that the white hat blending into the colours of the van as well as. Doing that strengthens the image too.



High level and about 60 secongs in Photoshop (and Nix Silver Efex). I've put her eyse roughly on the top third.

[Normo]

Thanks for the feedback, much appreciated.