Welcome to CiC.
Your profile mentions that you are a Professional Wedding Photographer; I think that for any shoot, the Main Subject requires the continuity of Colour Balance. Obviously capturing in Available Light one wants to create the textures of those golden rays for those shots, but the salient point is, I have found that discerning Clients really appreciate the effort to make the harmony and continuity of tone, especially if their images are in a collection, for example in an Album or a Slideshow
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In the case of this set of three images that you show, the Skin Tone of the Child varies dramatically:
Original:
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A quick re-balance for continuity of the Skin Tone of the Main Subject, whilst not aborting the Golden Tones of the late afternoon Sun:
WW
Last edited by William W; 13th September 2017 at 12:44 AM. Reason: removed comment, now not relevant
I agree with Bill that the white balance needs adjustment, not only to make it consistent, but because some look wrong. For example, I would guess that the tray in the second one is actually white, not bluish-white.
The third, with the confetti, is in my opinion a great capture. The first two, in my opinion, would be better with some cropping. For example, the first has a lot of high-contrast but irrelevant material in the top area, which distracts attention from the people. I would crop most of that off, leaving enough of the branches to provide interesting framing. Perhaps something like this:
The second one has the same problem, but more so because the detail above the child doesn't provide interesting framing; it's just distracting, and it isn't attractive. I would crop this too, but I think I would crop it very tight because there isn't a pleasing background above the child--for example, something like this:
+1 to the comments that Bill and Dan have made.
When shooting people, getting the skin tone to look right is critical, and that has not happened with these images. Both are shot in conditions where the automatic white balance function of your camera are likely to fail. Shooting into the sun can get you strange results and if you shoot in an area with a lot of green (greens, trees, etc.) will reflect that colour light back at your subject and give the skin tones (and everything else) a green colour cast.
If you shoot jpeg, then a custom white balance is pretty well mandatory and if you are shooting raw, include a neutral gray card in the first shot of a series (under the same lighting conditions) to give you a head start on correcting this issue.
Hi Jagmeet and welcome
In addition to the excellent advice you've already received, I'll just add a couple of comments.
Like Dan, I think the third shot is a beauty, particularly once the skin tones are corrected.
I'm not so keen on the first shot I'm afraid. I suspect shooting into very bright areas of sky for people shots has become a bit fashionable but I personally find the (blown out) bright sky distracting. It also appears to be causing lens flare in this shot (including veiling flare which results in loss of contrast).
Dave
I like #3 best. The composition in the first two is not quite optimal - subject position, crop, background (is this a washing line in #2?). Thinking about it, #3 is also a little too centered.
The flare and soft focus suggest an old lens (manual focus?). I like this look by the way, but the colours in #2 and #3 are a bit too strong for the retro look.
The colour of the grass is quite yellow in #2 even in the corrected version.
I tried doing quick edits of these. I found the color casts difficult to correct, perhaps because I was working with JPEGs. None of the edits are really finished products, but they might be useful.
Here's number 1. I did very little: I cropped from the top, dropped the blacks a bit, did a minor WB adjustment, and added some contrast:
Here's number 2. I cropped the top and the right side and adjusted it slightly for tilt. For WB, I very slightly reduced the yellow, and I made a substantial shift toward magenta on the green-magenta axis. I adjusted the yellows in the direction of green. Then I added contrast.
Here's number 3. I cropped both from the top and the sides, in part to get rid of the distraction in the top left. I left it centered because the interesting detail is behind the child, and it would look unbalanced to have less space in front of him. I really struggled with the color of this one. For WB, I moved it toward blue on that axis and substantially toward magenta on that one, but it still doesn't look right to me. I moved the yellows slightly in the green direction. I added contrast.
I have to say that I haven't encountered this much of a problem with color in a long time. I assume that the problem was that these were taken as JPEGs with a substantially wrong color balance setting. Before I started shooting raw, I had a bunch of holiday photos that were (at least with my limited skill) uncorrectable for that reason.
I hope this is useful.
Thanks to all, All advises are really helpful. I think I will learn too many things here. As learning should not be stopped through life.