backlit portrait help

[moz]

I shot this at highandry festival but it's not as good as I'd hoped. What should I have done? Can it be rescued with PP?



thanks
Moz

[digitor]

What do you think is wrong with it?

It might help if we knew what you wanted to change.

Cheers

[Yi-P]

I don't see much bad about this image... what do you want to do with PP or what you'd expected from this?

[mickeyjuice]

I'm with the others, I like it a lot and I'm not sure what you think needs fixing. In Lightroom you could up the fill light I guess, but I like it as is.

[Oscar]

Moz, I'm with the others on this one too.

The only thing I would like is to have the light source which shows between the guys neck and the lass' arm toned down.

Cheers, Mick

[moz]

The only thing I would like is to have the light source which shows between the guys neck and the lass' arm toned down

That's the setting sun

To me it looks cluttered and doesn't have much "grab" to my eyes, so I can't really be specific about what's wrong with it, I just know it's not as good as it could be. I might be suffering overexposure to it, but there doesn't seem to be anything I can do to make it leap out at me the way the image in my head did when I saw these two people.

Thanks for the comments. Sorry I can't be more specific.

[PiroStitch]

PErhaps a bit more dodging to have the guys face a bit more exposed might help, either that or go for a classic b&w Only thing about this image is that it looks like she's trying to poke a stick into his nose

[digitor]

Only thing about this image is that it looks like she's trying to poke a stick into his nose

Judging from the look on his face, it would seem that she's already stuck it in a fair way!

Cheers

[Oscar]

That's the setting sun

Well yeah, I kind of thought that may be the case or maybe a floodlight.

But it is that bright spot I find distracting and perhaps if it could be darkened (toned down) it may improve the image IMHO.

As Wayne commented I also think the facial features could be brighter.

Cheers, Mick

[methd]

There's nothing wrong with blowing out the background to expose the people in the photo ... I like the shot

[Mj]

I would suggest looking at giving the guy a little bit of extra light on the face, but most likely the things that are bugging you are the background items. Look at toning them down... you should look to tone down the green painting (or whatever it is) that is between them, but you could also consider removing the whole pole that is stabbing him in the back. Basically just focus on some PP that increases separation from back and foreground.

[moz]

I would suggest looking at giving the guy a little bit of extra light on the face, but ... focus on some PP that increases separation from back and foreground.

I've hacked a little at the image above from work to get these two. Better?


I'm not usually a fan of cloning stuff out, but the second image above definitely looks better to me. Thanks for the suggestions, maybe it's time to take "painting with light" a bit further.

(FireFox is giving wildly different gamma to Paint Shop Pro and none of the minitors are calibrated, so sorry if that's been stuffed up here. I'm also trying two different free image hosts - the first imageshack, the seond freeimagehosting.net)

[dawesy]

Don't know about PP but dropping exposure by 1-2 stops and hitting them with some flash from the right to bring them up over the ambient, about at arms length would do, would have looked good I suspect. Of course wandering around set up to take a candid like that is not trivial!

[moz]

Of course wandering around set up to take a candid like that is not trivial!

The hairy eyeball that guy is giving came from him noticing me in the first place - it was ok once they saw the shot on the camera and she was excited by it, but when I took the shot there was a bit of pressure to get it before he got too grumpy. I suspect he was not very keen on the face-painting to start with.

I really should get off-camera flash though. Hmm.

[phillipb]

Moz, I did a bit of quick and nasty PP to see what it wold look like with a planer background. Not sure myself

[moz]

Philip, thanks. I dunno, it looks ok but somehow I'm not convinced. Maybe it's too dark, or too blurred, but it doesn't look right. I think I'd rather have less clutter than no clutter if that makes sense. Perhaps 200/2.8 instead of 85/1.8 would have worked.

[PiroStitch]

I've hacked a little at the image above from work to get these two. Better?

First of the two is better as you've given it enough fill to see his face.

[moz]

Thanks for all the suggestions and comments, I've uploaded a revised version of the image now:


I actually cropped to get rid of the pole and most of the water bottle, then cloned out the remainder (actually cloned then cropped, so I had more clone-source). The highlight and shadow detail fixes were easy in Bibble, but those sliders are way, way higher than I normally see them.

thanks again
moz

[Matt. K]

Is she picking something out of his nose?