# First photoshoot that doesn't involve a newborn.  Feedback please!



## PinkPoodle (Oct 20, 2015)

So, I asked my friend if I could do a little shoot with her.  Up until now I've only photographed my own family and newborns.  Makeup done by me too~  

My friend's daughter is a very spirited little thing.  I had some trouble with her skin tone as she has different skin tones.  Her face was significantly different from her arms, and even her hands were different.  I "tinkered" with her in photoshop but everything I did looked bad so I just kind of left it.  The little one wouldn't stay still for even a second, so unfortunately the best photos we could get of her is when mom is holding her.  

I wish we could have had a reflector.... 

1)  
This is one where the little girl's skin tone is so different.  I can't seem to figure out how to even her out.  






2) 






3) 
One of the few pictures we could get this little one to be still for.  I think it might be overexposed??  Cant figure out why the flower is so washed out.  It is like that in the unedited photo as well.  





4)  I hate that her sweater is the same color as the path.    I'm sure theres a way to fix that in PS.  





Thanks in advance to anyone who takes the time to give me any feedback


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## SquarePeg (Oct 20, 2015)

These are very nice.  I like the way you captured them looking so natural and relaxed.  That seems to be something that is difficult for many new photographers to get right.  I don't know anything about post processing so can't help you on the skin tones or sweater.


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## jaomul (Oct 20, 2015)

I like how natural they both look


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## MRnats (Oct 20, 2015)

I don't know if it's my computer or if this is what you're going for but the whites are really blinding. I like the pics a lot overall though. Nice job.


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## tirediron (Oct 20, 2015)

The images are nice, great expressions, but the highlights are WAY too hot.


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## sashbar (Oct 20, 2015)

Agree with tirediron


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## Derrel (Oct 20, 2015)

These look significantly overexposed to me. Luckily, pictures of pretty ladies and lasses is one of the very,very few subjects where this much overexposure does not just kill the pictures. I would try reducing the exposure in software, and if your software has a "recovery" tool, I would use that to hopefully recover some of the lost highlight detail.


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## JacaRanda (Oct 20, 2015)

Very nice and worth any recovery efforts or PS magic. . What software do you have?

Sorry, I see you have PS.


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## Dillard (Oct 20, 2015)

I agree, definitely blow out in a few places, but you can easily clean them up in post! They look very natural. Well done


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## PinkPoodle (Oct 20, 2015)

SquarePeg said:


> These are very nice.  I like the way you captured them looking so natural and relaxed.  That seems to be something that is difficult for many new photographers to get right.  I don't know anything about post processing so can't help you on the skin tones or sweater.



Thank you so much!


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## PinkPoodle (Oct 20, 2015)

tirediron said:


> The images are nice, great expressions, but the highlights are WAY too hot.


 
Thank you!  I am literally new to all of this.  So should I just decrease the exposure in PS??


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## PinkPoodle (Oct 20, 2015)

Derrel said:


> These look significantly overexposed to me. Luckily, pictures of pretty ladies and lasses is one of the very,very few subjects where this much overexposure does not just kill the pictures. I would try reducing the exposure in software, and if your software has a "recovery" tool, I would use that to hopefully recover some of the lost highlight detail.



Thanks so much!!  I still have all of the unedited photos saved so I can make the needed adjustments.  I really appreciate your feedback~


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## PinkPoodle (Oct 20, 2015)

JacaRanda said:


> Very nice and worth any recovery efforts or PS magic. . What software do you have?
> 
> Sorry, I see you have PS.


Thank you!  I am still trying to learn all the ins and outs of PS. I'm sure I can find a Youtube video on it! lol


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## PinkPoodle (Oct 20, 2015)

Dillard said:


> I agree, definitely blow out in a few places, but you can easily clean them up in post! They look very natural. Well done



Thank you!!


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## JacaRanda (Oct 20, 2015)




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## The_Traveler (Oct 20, 2015)

Focus is good, color is lovely, models are gorgeous.

If these are raw images, a couple may be correctable.

This one below, unfortunately, has some flaws that may not be.
Their faces are turned up to the sky, thus there are really bright highlights on their cheekbones, nose and forehead that will be a bear to fix. (good reasons for shooting in open shade and not under the bright sky.)

Notice the histogram below that shows all the burnt out area.
Her sweater is the same tone as the walk and, even if you reduce the exposure, you probably don't have any texture in it.






On the other heand, this one is really lovely, The sweater can be reduced in brightness, not a huge amount but enough to make it less of an distraction, the image can be cropped to give a cozier look and vignetted to keep the viewers' eye in the center.


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## PinkPoodle (Oct 20, 2015)

JacaRanda said:


>


Thanks SOOO much!!  Very helpful!!


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## PinkPoodle (Oct 20, 2015)

The_Traveler said:


> Focus is good, color is lovely, models are gorgeous.
> 
> If these are raw images, a couple may be correctable.
> 
> ...



Thank youuu!!  I really love all of your information.  This is all so new to me and I just want to be able to have that attention to detail that experienced photographers have.   

And I absolutely love the crop and vignetted look of that photo you edited.


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## The_Traveler (Oct 21, 2015)

Glad you like them.
c/c with a why-I-said-that attached are much more useful that a straight comment.

From this shoot the lessons might be:


Try not to shoot under bright sun or even glare-y sky so that faces and cheekbones don't get burnt out.
Control clothing choices to be neutral, nothing totally white (unless it's a bride) and nothing too bright.
Before shooting, look past the people at the background and visualize how the background works.
It is fine to overexpose slightly, that technique is actually called expose to the right. But check the histogram to be certain you aren't clipping highlights. Expose to the right adds more photons to the shadows and allows better detail.
The difficulty in shooting scenes with people of really differing skin tones, is that it is sometimes difficult to expose and get enough information in both the light and dark skins. Auto-bracketing serves you well there. (my most difficult job was shooting the choir of an African Methodist Church who wwere dressed in brilliant white robes and wanted to be shot in the deep shade of a grove of oak trees. )
Make certain your subjects are lovely, trim, sweet and happy.

Lew


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## Granddad (Oct 22, 2015)

The software and technical stuff can be learned. Capturing (and selecting) good shots is the hard bit but you seem to have that in hand. 

Even with the overexposure and all the flaws I really like these shots.


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## PinkPoodle (Oct 23, 2015)

I'm seriously going to copy and paste all of what you said into some notes for me to reference gain.  Thank you so much!!  I am so new to this I actually have no idea what a histogram or auto-bracketing is.  Going to do some research!! 





The_Traveler said:


> Glad you like them.
> c/c with a why-I-said-that attached are much more useful that a straight comment.
> 
> From this shoot the lessons might be:
> ...


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## PinkPoodle (Oct 23, 2015)

Granddad said:


> The software and technical stuff can be learned. Capturing (and selecting) good shots is the hard bit but you seem to have that in hand.
> 
> Even with the overexposure and all the flaws I really like these shots.



Wow, thank you! Cant wait to do another shoot and (hopefully) improve!


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## Jim Walczak (Nov 11, 2015)

I agree with the general consensus here...nice shots, but over-exposed.  If these were shot in RAW (if not, they should have been), my advice would be to bring them into Adobe Camera RAW, take the exposure down a bit, play around with the "Recover Highlights" and I might even bump up "Shadows", "Clarity" and "Vibrance" a little.  If they were only shot as jpegs, you can still try running them through ACR, however you'll be less likely to recover those blown out highlights.  If you don't already understand this on the camera end, one very worth while trick to getting good exposure (even after the fact) is to learn and understand "Histograms".

(BTW, if your using Lightroom instead, while I have little/no experience with it, I suspect you could very likely do the exact same thing there as well.)

For example, if you go into Photoshop and look at the histogram for the last shot there, you'll see everything is peeking at the right side of the histogram...those are the "brights"....they're bunched up and peeking into the RED (indicating they're blown out).  Conversely, you'll also see a gap on the left side, suggesting there's little/no shadow detail.  While this isn't always possible and it's only a broad general rule of thumb, ideally the information in your histogram should be fairly equal from side to side with the majority of the peaks towards the middle.  Please remember though, that this isn't an end all, be all rule...low key photography for example, will often have everything towards the left and respectively, high key will always lean towards the right.  The significance of this is that if you use Camera RAW to edit your RAW files (or Lightroom I suspect), you'll see that histogram change as you adjust your Exposure, Shadows, use the Recovery tool, etc., etc..  Again, it's not an end all, be all rule, but you can usually use the histogram as a guide to help you better balance your exposures and as you learn more, you'll find that you can also use them concerning levels and curves (in Photoshop), etc., to put a bit more polish on your photos....it's WELL worth reading up on.





Since you have it marked as "OK to edit images", I took the liberty of doing a bit of work on that last image, doing exactly what I described above.  In this case, because the image is a jpeg (screen cap actually...I wasn't able to download the file itself for some reason), I wasn't able to recover those blown out highlights around the mother's lower back.  That said, just by bumping the exposure down, bringing the shadows up, bumping up the Clarity, Vibrance and Saturation...it's made a pretty significant difference.  And it took me LONGER to re-upload the file than it did to make the adjustments...only took a minute or two for some quick tweaks.  Again, watch your histograms as they can help guide you as you edit.

...and once you have a firm grasp on the concept of histograms, take a peek-see at the LCD on your camera.  Chances are it displays histogram info too and you can use this much like to light meter to determine right away if you've over or under exposed the shot.  In addition, while I can't speak to other companies, I believe both Nikon and Canon both have ways to display blown out highlight info when you review your images...it's worth digging thru your camera menus for.

Also another little tip...if you're not already aware of this, when your shooting with digital cameras there's an adage to be aware of; _always expose for the highlights_!  This is actually the exact opposite of how people used to shoot back in the days of film, where you had to expose for the shadows.  In essence, think of the pixels in your digital camera much like a bucket...just as a bucket can only hold just so much water, your pixels can only record just so much information.  Too much light (over-exposed) and the bucket over-flows and you end up with blown out highlights that, more often than not, can't be recovered....for the most part, once a digital image is over-exposed on a camera, the highlight information is usually lost.  Again don't know if you're aware of that or not, but since I can't really tell whether the over-exposure with your images is due to post processing or how they were shot, I thought I'd mention it.

As far as the girl's skin tones...honestly...I wouldn't worry too much about it personally.  Using various techniques in Photoshop, such as layers, dodging, burning, etc., you could even that out, however, the fact of the matter is that most people in general aren't all that "monochrome" (LOL)...just my own opinion, but I think better exposure (either via software or at the camera) would likely have served these images better than any sense of tweaking in that specific regard.


As someone else suggested, learning the software is of course, a task in itself, however as with learning the camera, it will come with time, patience, practice and persistence.  Don't be afraid to make mistakes...we *ALL* do...it's part of the learning process.   And don't be afraid to experiment and explore...many a novice gets intimidated by the software and they end up missing out on a lot of cool stuff!  If you are indeed using Photoshop, one very nice advantage is that there's a TON of information such a tutorials and such available on the internet...just Google "photoshop image editing tutorials" and you should find PLENTY to get you started.

These are, as always, just my own personal opinions...please use them as such and I hope they help!


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## BananaRepublic (Nov 11, 2015)

Is it the spot metering thats making the whites blinding


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## The_Traveler (Nov 11, 2015)

Spot metering could cause the over-exposure but checking the histogram would reveal the over-exposure.
Knowing about the issues of the bright sky reflecting on the upper surfaces of the face and white shirts/sweaters becoming burnt out just comes with a bit of experience.

Caution is especially warranted when the skin tones are darker than the clothing. 
Typically people expose for the skin, to be certain of getting adequate detail; thus exposing as if the skin was what we are used to a caucasian skintones, pushes everything up a stop perhaps and may push highlights over into the blown out condition.

As I've said before, my biggest problem event was shooting a picnic in honor of the choir at a local AME church. The choir was wearing white satin robes and I bracketed every shot and ended up doing loads of merging exposures to get decent skin tones and detail in the highlights of the gowns.

L


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## PinkPoodle (Nov 20, 2015)

Thank you SO much @Jim Walczak !!!!  I haven't logged onto here in a while so didn't see your message until now, but I SO very appreciate all of your feedback~


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## PinkPoodle (Nov 20, 2015)

@The_Traveler
 Spot metering and histogram is literally something I know nothing about.  I am hoping to find some time this week and do some research on it.  I really appreciate your comment and information.


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## The_Traveler (Nov 20, 2015)

Here are some short tutorials about using the histogram.

Understanding Histograms - Luminous Landscape
Expose Right - Luminous Landscape
Settings for an Accurate Histogram  - Luminous Landscape

You will be an expert after 20 minutes.
In regards spot metering, your Olympus E-M5 manual, p 48 says:


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