Your photos 15

Your photos (15)

Take Better Photos

Hints and tips
by Philip Grosset

Sunset

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with comments from Philip Grosset

"Please let me know what you think. Thanks. The tea shop was of two Japanese ladies sitting in a Chinese tea shop in Taiwan. I don't have a very good scanner and at first it scanned real dark very much unlike the original photo. I only lighted it some. The second photo was of a model boat. I know it is in the middle of the frame but it looked okay for this type of shot. The third shot is of my girl friends daughter. She is three and a half. Thank you for your time." (Tony Gannon)

You say your photo (left) is of two Japanese ladies. If so, why not get in closer so that we can see them and the table really clearly, as on the right? (If it's important to you to establish the outdoor setting, you can always move just a bit further away than I've done.) I've included more of one glass door than the other, as it didn't seem necessary to show them both, and this conveniently moves the ladies a bit more off-centre. I chose the left-hand door to show more of, so as to provide more space for the lady on the right to look into!

This (on the left) isn't really a wildly exciting photo! I've much increased the contrast which also brings out the reflections , and I've moved the model ship (that no longer looks like a model, does it?) to the left-hand side. It's always better to leave more room in front of a moving object as this suggests it's really moving! Having it dead-centre makes it look becalmed.

I like this picture (left) - but I like it even more after removing some of the unnecessary blank space around it and by increasing the contrast, as on the right. It really doesn't matter at all that the little girl is dead-centre. Actually the top of the bandanna fills in the right hand side of the picture and makes it look as if she is on the right! An excellent photo!

Reply from Tony Gannon: "First thank you for taking the time to comment on my photos. These comment made me stop and think. Think because there is more than pushing a button. I had forgotten some of the simple things that could have made my photos better. This is why I like your Web site, it is in simple terms so anyone can understand. Yes, I agree with your comments and your examples. Just a little cropping and you have a much better picture. My scanner is very cheap. So after I scan they never look like the actual photo. After you added the contrast, the pictures looked closer to the actual ones. Again, thank you very much."

"Hello, I'm very impressed with your site and sight :-) I'm an amateur in the original sense of the word (latin for "love"): I love my beautiful daughter Helena and I adore taking pictures of her, just using a simple Sony Mavica that takes jpeg-images directly on a floppy disk, on a 640*480 format. (This cheap way of taking digital pictures has allowed me to take over 1.000 pics of her, something I couldn't dream of paying with a normal camera). I am very interested in learning from you how I could improve my picture-taking, because I find it quite impossible to capture my daughter's beauty in an appropriate way. I have sent 5 pictures attached, but feel free to leave some out if it takes you too much trouble commenting on them all!" (Thomas Verhuyck, Belgium)

I've picked three of your photos. I really like this one (on the left) - and I like it even more after I've allowed more space in front of her eyes than behind them (as on the right). I've also made her face slightly more contrasty. You really need to spend quite some time with image editing software to get the most out of a digital camera.

This (on the left) is a very imaginative and pleasing shot, possibly improved (on the right) by getting rid of some of the blank space in front of her. I've also slightly increased the contrast to give her a bit more color.

These two pictures are, I suggest, much less successful. The one on the left has an attractive enough light background, but the girl looks a bit glum, the cracks in the wall are apparently running out of her nose and mouth, and the sloping roof above doesn't help the picture. On the right, she looks a bit anguished and you're really too close in. It's a pity to cut off her chin. and the dummy (pacifier) obscures her mouth. She'd have been better lit by daylight (or by flash) too, so as to avoid the yellow cast.
I'm rather surprised you didn't include more animated pictures of her looking happy and really enjoying herself, immersed in some activity or interacting with someone else. Here she looks rather bored at having all these photos taken! I can't help wondering whether 1000 of them aren't rather too many for any subject to cope with!
Don't worry too much about trying to take pictures to show your daughter's beauty. Show her happy, excited or really engaged in what she is doing, and look out for humorous shots of her - and all the rest will follow.

Reply from Thomas Verhuyck: "First of all thank you for your helpful comments, and for your incredibly fast reply. I don't have much experience in editing or treating images with Adobe Photoshop. The only thing I do sometimes, is use Image Composer to occasionally crop something away. But I'll start looking for a good program and tutorial, because you really did improve the pictures I've taken! The yellow color tone on the "close up where I cut my daughter's chin off", is actually natural sunlight (evening): I thought it looked romantic and gleamy. Any suggestions on how to deal with "sunset lighting"? Or is that always something to avoid? I hadn't even realised that all the pics I sent you, were indeed quite bored or inactive: I'll surely try to work on that!
I couldn't help sending you one last picture (I truly swear this is the last one :-), hoping you could comment on this one. Any suggestions on how to capture motion and expressions? She's such a whirlwind that the only thing I feel I can do, is have patience, patience and then some more patience?"

A happy photo. As you say, you need lots of patience. You can sometimes get some intereresting expressions by arranging for someone beside you but off-camera to behave in a comic way! Or use a camera with a motor drive to catch fleeting expressions (or to waste a lot of film!).

The yellow cast produced by evening light (two pictures up from here) can be acceptable when it's a more obvious evening scene. It doesn't look so good, though, when suddenly mixed in with other photos.

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