My "Shoot from the Hip Shots" are always better than my Staged Shots

[theantiquetiger]

I shot this last night while waiting on the parade. My daughter was up up on this planter, swinging around the tree, and I yell, "Smile Morgan!" and shoot this from the hip. The eyes are alittle soft, but I love the composition. I did blur the background but it has not been cropped



This was a staged shot a few hours earlier. I don't like it, nothing pops on this image. I haven't even did any pp because I don't like it. I just have it here to compare to my other image

[Iguanasan]

I'd say what you are noticing is how comfortable the subject is. In the first shot, she was playing and happy and you captured that feeling. In the second shot she was smiling but because it was staged she's a little off-kilter or uncomfortable. It's not a natural feeling.

I'd be interested to see the first one without the background blur. You can see evidence around the edges that the blur is artificial and I don't think you need to blur it to make the subject stand out. That cutie in the red dress stands out quite fine without it.

Cheers!

[theantiquetiger]

I'd say what you are noticing is how comfortable the subject is. In the first shot, she was playing and happy and you captured that feeling. In the second shot she was smiling but because it was staged she's a little off-kilter or uncomfortable. It's not a natural feeling.

I'd be interested to see the first one without the background blur. You can see evidence around the edges that the blur is artificial and I don't think you need to blur it to make the subject stand out. That cutie in the red dress stands out quite fine without it.

Cheers!

Yeah, I did she the halo around her after I posted it here. I dod plan to go back and correct it (its funny the things I don't see in GIMP, but see after I post it here, I once posted a photo with my finger in the shot, and I never noticed it in GIMP)

Here is the original (all that I have done is white balance)

[Marko]

shot 1 is underexposed due to the bright sky. It could have been fixed w/fillflash, reflector or more exposure overall.
If you ever have to make a choice, always light or expose for for the main subject.

Shot 2 is well exposed, good fun posing, and sharp eyes. My level 2 niggles here would be about cropping out distracting elements (red object at top of frame - sprinkler hose at the bottom). Still very nice casual holiday shot for sure!

[Iguanasan]

Not sure what happened but I noticed this thread was marked closed. It felt like a mistake to me so I re-opened it. I hope that was OK.

Now, back to the critique.

Mark give some great suggestions, however, a casual street portrait type of shot does not lend itself well to reflectors and all that so really what you needed to do was to expose for her face and ensure that the focus was spot on. Can I ask what settings you were using? All of your images have the EXIF ripped out of them so I can't make any suggestions without knowing how you photographed it.

[theantiquetiger]

I'm at work, so I will have to get the settings tomorrow. I would guess it was 1600iso, f5.0, 1/80, because I shot mostly in this range that night. I don't know why the EXIF file is removed, maybe when I convert it from raw to jpeg or upload it to Flickr.

Mark, the second shot is the one I don't like, I like the street shot. I know the second is better exposed, sharper on the eyes, etc, but the first is just 1000x better composition. Like I said in the thread title, it seems all my "shoot from the hip" seem to be better than when I try to stage a shot (mostly with my daughters).

[Marko]

Lol- this happens to everyone AT....I have recent shots where the comp was bang on but the exposure was too off to fix due to tricky lighting...into the garbage can they go.

Iggy is right for this image - reflector was a bad suggestion here. camera fill flash set to minus 1 or 2 would likely have been my choice here.

Please accept something right now though.....if an image has very good comp but bad exposure, and unsharp eyes........it's a 'bad' photo. The reverse is usually true as well.
Objectively shot 2 is MUCH better than shot 1.....

Sorry this thread got closed - probably my bad. thx for the fix Iggy!