Reply To: Seeking constructive criticism about my work

[nesgran]

No amount of software can rescue a bad photo but use gimp, if you didn’t shoot in RAW you’re better off leaving it like it is. Looking closer I would say you need to get rid of some of the noise as well. As for the photo being overexposed, well, the background is, but the subject is pretty nicely lit or if anything a little too dark. If you have a RAW file of it duplicate the photo in two layers and very carefully mask out the background, reduce the exposure of just that layer by 1.5 stops maybe. It may need a bit increased exposure if you do that though as the photo will probably look quite dark since you lose the bright part of it. Had you had a bit of off camera light on that photo the background would have been properly exposed as would the person. I think the photo actually work pretty well as it is, if you have lightroom pull back a little on the whites and highlights slider and it might just sort itself out but you might find yourself wanting to bump the exposure up a little if you get rid of the bright parts.

If you wanted to highlight the phone you’d need to get more light on it which will be difficult since it is in a black case against a very dark background.

 

If you want to do it properly why not download a 30 day free trial of photoshop CS6 and lightroom 5? If you can’t make heads or tails of it I can always have a look at it if you want if you have a RAW file, if you only have a jpg it probably isn’t worth the bother.