purplemattfish
portrait of a happy couple - Day 358 of Project 365
09/08/09
This is markfieldingpic's older brother and his fiancée, they're getting married in a a couple of weeks and Mark and I have been asked to take the photos at the wedding.
They wanted to do a little session before the wedding but and as Mark resides in Japan (and isn't back yet), it was more convenient for me to pop round than him.
This is one of the shots from that session. It was very interesting doing my first "real" photo session where there are given objectives to be achieved within a reasonable time-scale. I tend to fiddle about with my self portraits and other shots, flitting from one idea to another without any structure. Within a couple of minutes it became apparent that this "couple portrait malarkey" is a whole different ball game... and my disorganised eccentricity needs to be replaced with a confident methodical calm.
I'm fairly happy with the output and I hope they will be too! I chose this picture for my 365 as more of a reminder to make sure take more care in future. This picture could have been one of the better shots. their expressions are relaxed and natural, and basically they, as subjects, have done their part perfectly. On the other hand I'm still shooting at 200mm@f2.8, at this distance (2.5m/ 8feet) this gives me a depth of field of about 1.5cm (circa 1/2") Which means that as her head is slightly in front of his, her face is slightly out of focus. Not a problem on the web at these resolutions, but printed at A3 size (the size one of these shots will be printed out at) its going to fairly obvious that I've not got it right!
The main objective of my 365 was "to become a better photographer" and whilst I realise what's wrong with this shot, I need to apply that knowledge before I press the shutter, not in post processing. I'm probably being very harsh, but I find that I need to be my biggest critic. Plus most people on Flickr are genuinely nice people and tend to refrain from pointing out mistakes like this for fear of offending. So if anyone else feels like diving in with some more critique please feel free ;)
Fortunately a good chunk of the other shots came out "ok" so it wasn't a disaster of epic proportions! The moral here is whilst I might have spent a chunk of hard earned cash on a fast lens I sometimes need to stop it down a bit more!
Lightroom: start with direct positive preset then lots of tweaking, use the brush tool to give their eyes a little more sparkle, crop to square (probably not the best crop for this pic but I have a square thing going on at the moment and I didn't want to break the trend!) sharpen (aggressively to try and cover up the focus...doh!) save to JPG
portrait of a happy couple - Day 358 of Project 365
09/08/09
This is markfieldingpic's older brother and his fiancée, they're getting married in a a couple of weeks and Mark and I have been asked to take the photos at the wedding.
They wanted to do a little session before the wedding but and as Mark resides in Japan (and isn't back yet), it was more convenient for me to pop round than him.
This is one of the shots from that session. It was very interesting doing my first "real" photo session where there are given objectives to be achieved within a reasonable time-scale. I tend to fiddle about with my self portraits and other shots, flitting from one idea to another without any structure. Within a couple of minutes it became apparent that this "couple portrait malarkey" is a whole different ball game... and my disorganised eccentricity needs to be replaced with a confident methodical calm.
I'm fairly happy with the output and I hope they will be too! I chose this picture for my 365 as more of a reminder to make sure take more care in future. This picture could have been one of the better shots. their expressions are relaxed and natural, and basically they, as subjects, have done their part perfectly. On the other hand I'm still shooting at 200mm@f2.8, at this distance (2.5m/ 8feet) this gives me a depth of field of about 1.5cm (circa 1/2") Which means that as her head is slightly in front of his, her face is slightly out of focus. Not a problem on the web at these resolutions, but printed at A3 size (the size one of these shots will be printed out at) its going to fairly obvious that I've not got it right!
The main objective of my 365 was "to become a better photographer" and whilst I realise what's wrong with this shot, I need to apply that knowledge before I press the shutter, not in post processing. I'm probably being very harsh, but I find that I need to be my biggest critic. Plus most people on Flickr are genuinely nice people and tend to refrain from pointing out mistakes like this for fear of offending. So if anyone else feels like diving in with some more critique please feel free ;)
Fortunately a good chunk of the other shots came out "ok" so it wasn't a disaster of epic proportions! The moral here is whilst I might have spent a chunk of hard earned cash on a fast lens I sometimes need to stop it down a bit more!
Lightroom: start with direct positive preset then lots of tweaking, use the brush tool to give their eyes a little more sparkle, crop to square (probably not the best crop for this pic but I have a square thing going on at the moment and I didn't want to break the trend!) sharpen (aggressively to try and cover up the focus...doh!) save to JPG