Mother and child

[Evertking]

[William W]

Very good work.

You indeed have talent.

The three hands are excellent: very emotive.

Two issues that judges would likely critique:

1. The woman's nose cuts the outline of her LH cheek - that's typically a technical no-no in portraiture
2. Fix the Cyan cast in the baby's feet - even if that's the 'correct colour'

WW

[Manfred M]

Two issues that judges would likely critique:

1. The woman's nose cuts the outline of her LH cheek - that's typically a technical no-no in portraiture
2. Fix the Cyan cast in the baby's feet - even if that's the 'correct colour'

WW

I'd probably let the nose go as the impact on the image is not negative as the woman has her eyes closed so the "goofy eye" look that we often get from the nose cutting the cheek is not there. The blue foot, would likely be considered.

I'd also note the large amount of negative space above the woman's head and also the distortion of the woman's arm when compared to the rest of her body.

I'd probably score this at 8.5 or 9 out of 10; a very good image. Full points for emotional impact, almost full points for technical and probably a full point off for organization (composition and space).

Note - I'm working on my National judging certification, so am a bit sensitized to this right now.

[Shadowman]

Nicely done.

[pnodrog]

Over all I like it. A very pleasant portrait. In addition to the above observations I feel that the skin and hair textures have been softened a little bit too much.

[DanK]

All in all, a beautiful image; it's very attractive, and you have nicely captured the bond between mother and child.

I am not a professional portrait photographer, but I do a lot of candids of kids, so take my comments with a grain of salt.

I am not troubled by the nose at all in this photo. I didn't even notice it until it was mentioned. I agree about taking off a bit of negative space at the top. Brightening your image, I see that you have a strong vignette, which you would want to redo in that case.

I'm puzzled by the distortion of the arm that Manfred noted. I assumed from that that you were shooting wide, but the exif reads 50mm. In general, I try to go somewhat longer than that when doing candids (when physical space allows), which would lessen this effect. In fact, fairly often, I use a 70-200 for mine. I haven't checked, but I would guess that my modal FL for baby and toddler photos is probably in the 70-100 mm range.

[rpcrowe]

Lovely image that captures the bond between mother and child.

I agree with most of the critiques above however, I am certain that this image would be very well received. We photographers tend to dissect an image while other folks don't look at things like the nose breaking the cheek..

However, the one thing that the mother might not be totally happy with is her left hand which looks a bit large... However, she might not even notice that...

I would recommend that, if possible, you obtain a medium telephone zoom of about 70-200mm or 70-300mm for your people shooting given that you have enough space to utilize a focal range this long. A 50mm lens is, even for 3/4 length shots, a bit short...

My favorite portrait lens is the Canon 70-200mm f/4L IS. However a Tamron or Sigma 70-300mm f/4-5.6 would do quite well. I shoot most of my portraits at f/4 to f/5.6 with a longer focal length which allows me to get both eyes in focus but, enables me to blur the background (given that the background is sufficiently far from the subject).

A less expensive alternative might be the telephoto kit lens from Nikon or Canon. Canon. Canon's version is the 55-250mm f/4-5.6 (there are several of these). Just stay away from the wider side of the lens or you would defeat your primary purpose in using a lens with a longer focal length.