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I had a portrait shoot today with two great kids. Mum didn't want to be in any of the images which I was a little surprised with. I had loads of fun, although it is HARD work working with kids. I'm slowly learning you just have to make it a FUN experience! Here's one of my faves from the day, of course comments/critique welcomed:

Brotherly love:

Fantastic shot, Geoff. I like it a lot.

Alex

A portrait to treasure Geoff. Lovely exposure and contrast. I would be tempted to experiment cropping in tighter to really focus on the boys, particularly a tad from the top and right side getting rid of the bush and help balance the stair rails a little, and having the boys eyes off centre in the shot would only enhance the image IMO
cheers
marco

Subject matter excellent.

Critique:

The background could be a wee bit more out of focus.
There is too much contrast differential between the young lads shirts and their hair. We are actually looking at white approaching no pixel value at all and black that has too many pixels.

The hand in the middle of the two boys is a little out of place and would have been better not to have been there.

As I said Geoff, excellent subject matter

Thanks for the critique guys - really appreciate the comments.

Marco - a tighter crop could definately work to advantage, will have a go at this.

Chris - your words are always full of wisdom and great knowledge, I will have a play around with the contrast/brightness of the image tonight. It will also give me some more practice with the blur tool.

The hand in the middle - well, they're kids and whilst you can *ask* them to sit still with arms around each other for so long, sometimes you just have to go with the flow and that's what I did - yep it'd probably be better off not there but something out of my control. I could try PPing it out, but I'm not that good

Again - thanks for the comments guys, much appreciated. Helps make this fabulous forum what it is!

Great capture Geoff and ditto to what's already been said...*baaaaaaa*

Love the lego man being held hostage though

ok...so now I have cropped, fixed contrast/brightness so there's not such a difference between black heads of hair and white t-shirts, I've cropped in nice and close and I've blurred out the background, and here we are:

Geoff - IMHO that is 1000% better

Thanks Chris - I was just doing what you suggested. Love ya work

The second is much better - well done, I'm sure the Mum will be happy with the results!

I would go for an even tighter crop. Cut out all the steps and focus entirely on their faces. The background adds little to the image but the faces are gorgeous!

Cheers
Sheila

Think I agree with Sheila... try a really tight crop removing the extraneous hand and most of the background and maybe increase blur on any remaining backgroung even more.... you got nothing to lose bar a few minutes of your time !!!

I think both copies are great, a tighter crop hmm.. maybe. The backgroud does add to the image for me.. But thats just a personal taste.


MATT