Finally got a Good Christmas Portrait of my Daughters

I do know I cut her foot off, but I can live with it.

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7019/6...b819419f_b.jpg

A lovely shot, Mr. Tiger. :) Merry Christmas and happy holidays. I noticed you noticed the foot. That's half the battle of becoming a better photographer. Would you have noticed the foot six months ago?

Tiger - The shot is beautiful. Lopping off appendages is totally acceptable, unless in your mind you did not want to, then, well, lopping wasn't good. I would love to have permission to grab it and do a little post on it if is ok with you. :-) Nope - i won't give your little miss her foot back. ;-D

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Originally Posted by susan

Tiger - The shot is beautiful. Lopping off appendages is totally acceptable, unless in your mind you did not want to, then, well, lopping wasn't good. I would love to have permission to grab it and do a little post on it if is ok with you. :-) Nope - i won't give your little miss her foot back. ;-D

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Susan, don't grab the one I used in the original post, use this, untouched, just converted from raw

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7171/6...47ed9ca4_b.jpg

First off, your little miss' are quite adorable!

Here you go, Tiger. If I had taken a little more time, I would have preserved the detail in the whites of the stockings and rocker, toned down the brightness on the faces a little bit. Le Sigh... Mostly - I balanced the whites... I also took out the shadows on the mantle piece and brought up the detail in the blacks on your daughter in the rocker. I cloned the granite to get rid of the hot spots near the far right stocking. Middle image is pre-sharpen, last one is with sharpening to bring out more detail... viewers discretion of which one one may prefer... (I like the softer one as they are little girls.) Thanks for letting me play!

Looks like the board compressed these susan - were they >275 k?

Even with the compression though we can see the differences in tonality between original and fixed. The original is underexposed by quite a bit. When we shoot portraits conventionally, one of the goals is to get the face full of light, but especially the eyes. You should be able to see the colour of the eyes, catchlights in the eyes. This is not the case here i'm afraid.

I was up late last night and saw your post. I like the composition you came up with. I also took a stab at editing your wonderful portrait. I blurred the background and with a levels layer dodged the girls to brighten them. Also sharpened their eyes. I couldn't bring back the blacks in the dresses, but you might be able to do that with the RAW image. Merry Christmas.

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7170/6...1b0de77f_b.jpg

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Originally Posted by Marko

Looks like the board compressed these susan - were they >275 k?

Even with the compression though we can see the differences in tonality between original and fixed. The original is underexposed by quite a bit. When we shoot portraits conventionally, one of the goals is to get the face full of light, but especially the eyes. You should be able to see the colour of the eyes, catchlights in the eyes. This is not the case here i'm afraid.

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Underexposed? I thought it was exposed perfectly. It is the exact light I was using. I guess I need to start shooting to where I think it is overexposed.

I told my wife I want an umbrella light!!!! (eBay, here I come)

My first indicator my image is underexposed is color noise. (Usually with the low exposure/high ISO). Did you use flash? If you have a window near there, you could use a reflector too (I don't have one but I make one from tin foil around a big chunk of cardboard).

Girls are sweet!

I went and had it printed today, it is a lot darker than it shows on computer