[C&C] First pic I've taken that's turned out okay-ish...

oq4v3ht0u76kf2

(Firstly, I think this counts as C&C... not sure though?)

Hi guys, only starting out - believe me! I'm using a Fuji S5800 so no fancy SLR here but I'm still at the point where the camera is better than me so I won't be upgrading for a few months yet.

Took this one on Grafton St. the other day and I just really liked it, was wondering what you guys thought? I like the thin almost-constant white just to the left of the face, wish I had've gotten it all the way down the pic creating a kind of divider.

Paulw

Firstly, good to see you posting picts.

I think this image would have been better taken in portrait mode. Cutting off the top of the head and the chin just seems odd and doesn't look good.

Nice detail in the face and eyes. A bit of fill-flash might have illuminated his eyes a bit more though.

Just my view.

Ricky91t

NIce photo good idea but its ashame you cut parts of the head off
I think selective colouring might look good on this pic

oq4v3ht0u76kf2

Paulw wrote: »

Firstly, good to see you posting picts.

I think this image would have been better taken in portrait mode. Cutting off the top of the head and the chin just seems odd and doesn't look good.

Nice detail in the face and eyes. A bit of fill-flash might have illuminated his eyes a bit more though.

Just my view.

Cheers mate, yeah, posting the first pic was always gonna be the tough part. Now that I look at it, I do see how silly it was to get so close. I'm starting to think that it's maybe just my photogenic friend that gives this picture any real redeeming quality. Not to worry though, memory is cheap and I have all the time in the world! Thanks for your input mate.

ricky91t wrote: »

NIce photo good idea but its ashame you cut parts of the head off
I think selective colouring might look good on this pic

Cheers for the compliment man. What do you mean by selective colouring? (Yeah, that's now newbie new I am!)

City-Exile

You say it was the first picture which turned out ok. Were your other pictures also of people, or were you just shooting randomly, hoping something worked? I'm just curious as to what you were trying to achieve & where you want to go with photography.

At the moment, this is just a picture of someone's head, which is in focus, reasonably well exposed, but not straight & very must an isolated image.

oq4v3ht0u76kf2

I've mostly been taking pictures of people, yeah... I suppose my favourite thing to take photos of is people in Dublin city. You're right in terms of the fact that the pic has no real purpose behind it other than me playing about.

I'm very fond of macro shots, the whole blurry-background focused-foreground (cliche?) is something I really like and I guess is more or less all I've been trying to do.

When you say an isolated image, what do you mean? In terms of it's literally just a face with nothing else or .. ?

Cheers for the input Peadar.

Beef

Hi Rob - decent start from you! There are some problems in terms of composition/placement of subject however... Often a tight portrait can look well if you crop some of the head from the subject - it can enhance the importance of the eyes in a shot and I've seen some portrait photographers use the technique to great effect. Rarely however does a shot with the chin cropped off work imo. I also think if you do crop the top of the head - you need the subjects eyes to be more engaging and not looking away as is the case here. This looks like it was a candid shot rather than posed, so maybe that was not possible. Exposure wise it looks fine - and it's sharp also. A black and white conversion might be something to consider?

Ricky91t

Sorry decided id show you what it is!
Got this off your flickr hope you dont mind

City-Exile

Marlowe Whispering Soybean wrote: »

When you say an isolated image, what do you mean? In terms of it's literally just a face with nothing else or .. ?

Cheers for the input Peadar.

Rob, when I say the image is isolated, I mean that it's just a single image & we don't see any pattern, which suggests that you were striving to achieve something.

Anyone can click the shutter & capture a one-off, decent shot.
When an image is isolated like this, we don't see any evidence of what you were after & how you arrived at this image.

I'll try to use these images as an example.
I was trying to get some nice shots of bottles, with a shallow depth of field.
I tried different things, until I eventually settled on the last one.
Once I had that shot, I was content that I had made some progress during the session.
The image I like, isn't isolated, as it's part of a set, where the bad are in with the not so bad. It gives people a better idea of what I was trying to achieve.

oq4v3ht0u76kf2

Beef wrote: »

Hi Rob - decent start from you! There are some problems in terms of composition/placement of subject however... Often a tight portrait can look well if you crop some of the head from the subject - it can enhance the importance of the eyes in a shot and I've seen some portrait photographers use the technique to great effect. Rarely however does a shot with the chin cropped off work imo. I also think if you do crop the top of the head - you need the subjects eyes to be more engaging and not looking away as is the case here. This looks like it was a candid shot rather than posed, so maybe that was not possible. Exposure wise it looks fine - and it's sharp also. A black and white conversion might be something to consider?

Cheers Beef, yeah, the more I look at it after the comments in here the more I think that not having the chin was a really, really bad idea! I love the expression on his face which I think would be lost with eye contact but I do understand what you mean when you say the shot would be much more engaging that way. Thanks for the input mate!

ricky91t wrote: »

Sorry decided id show you what it is!
Got this off your flickr hope you dont mind

Ricky, no problem man - I've always been a "show me" rather than "tell me" kinda guy so your example was great. Did you just do that in Photoshop or...? I've tried before to crop peoples faces or heads out of photos just for fun but I've never been able to get a nice sharp "seperation" like you did there - really quickly!

City-Exile wrote: »

Rob, when I say the image is isolated, I mean that it's just a single image & we don't see any pattern, which suggests that you were striving to achieve something.

Anyone can click the shutter & capture a one-off, decent shot.
When an image is isolated like this, we don't see any evidence of what you were after & how you arrived at this image.

I'll try to use these images as an example.
I was trying to get some nice shots of bottles, with a shallow depth of field.
I tried different things, until I eventually settled on the last one.
Once I had that shot, I was content that I had made some progress during the session.
The image I like, isn't isolated, as it's part of a set, where the bad are in with the not so bad. It gives people a better idea of what I was trying to achieve.

Ah, I completely understand now. Yeah, there were a few run-ins to this shot alright but I haven't got them on Flickr yet, I'll make sure to up them when I get home. Thanks again for the comments.

Ricky91t

I just used the lasso tool and quickly ran round the head copied it created a new layer pasted it.Set the original layer to non visible and erased out the bits i didn't lasso out then set the hue?saturation and saved it

AnCatDubh

Hi Rob,

In addition to whats been suggested, just a point of note - don't grow too fond of that "thin almost-constant white just to the left of the face". If i understand you correctly the area is actually burn out or over exposure - where the camera can't cope with the brightness of the image being presented to it to capture.

The reason why i'm suggesting that you don't fall in love with it is that if you need to start adjusting your image - brightness, contrast, levels, etc.... then such areas will be the biggest pain in the butt that you will come across, simply for the reason that they won't shift in harmony with the rest of the image - it happens at the opposite end of the spectrum too (pure black or under exposure).

To keep an eye out for this at time of capture learn about your camera's histogram feature. Then get into the habit of compose->click->check histogram->make adjustments if necessary and retake. Typically you would adjust the exposure compensation to bring the brightness levels down or up as may be needed by your composition.

You will also have the instance where you can't adjust the exposure compensation as it simply makes your main subject or focus area too dark (perhaps pushing it into the black range) - pretty extreme situation there where you may be dealing with really bright sunlight and an area in the shadows all of which you are hoping to capture. Given that its Ireland and the amount of rain that we are having then its hardly likely that you may ever have to deal with such extreme conditions

In your actual image posted, you would have had scope to compensate appropriately if you didn't want to have that burned image look. Then again in this instance you get away with it and to be honest, if you like it, then thats all that really matters (hence feel free to disregard everything i've typed ).

Hope that helps.