[muzzman]

CC:

You have been incredibly helpful, thank you so much.  I have seen the photo on Flickr, you may remove it.

You are correct in that a lot of the photos are softer than the need to be – likely because they were done before I knew about the masking/adjustment brushes in Lightroom/Camera Raw.  That particular photo of the girls running is out of focus but I thought it had artistic merit (maybe not…).  It was also from our very first session we did as a business and the very first one either of us have ever done outdoors so the experience was/is definitely lacking (and I guess it shows).

Thanks for the sharpening comments.  From the prints we have already done I knew that screen vs print were different to some extent but never realised how much.  Most of the images we are selling to customers are electronic copies on disc.  With digital photo frames/displays becoming more and more common I honestly don’t know whether they will eventually be printed or kept in electronic format.  I know when we print out the images ourselves (and ‘by ourselves’ I mean sending it to the pro lab) we can process it as such – and for when we do the client viewing we want them to be processed for the monitor – but what about the ones we put on disc?

Also, when you say “might look better with proper sharpening”, how do I do this?  Is it a case of setting the overall sharpness slider in Lightroom appropriately, or doing selective sharpening by using an adjustment brush (like you have with the eyes on the Flickr photo), or is there another technique that I need to research?

Looking at your other Flickr photos, I see what you mean about EXIF data.  She is about 1.5-2 metres away from the rear backdrop but close to the ground so you’re right the dress is probably affecting the backdrop colour.

With regards to lighting – you are dead right again about using the rectangular softboxes 🙂  We were originally going to just use three – two pointing to the front of the subject and one mounted on the ceiling pointing more or less to the top and back of their head.  I guess we’d need to experiment where to put the fourth one.  We have 4 x Elinchrom D-Lite RX2’s, they have some really good features (such as variability in the modelling light).  I have tried to do some research into lighting techniques and setups – but could only really find ones on either doing it really simply, or an all-out fashion shoot, nothing really in between.  I have youtube blocked here at work but I will do some searching there tonight.  In the mean time if you can provide some links I would be forever grateful.

Thanks again…

 

[muzzman]

EyedocPhotog:

Thanks for the nice comments.  As I said we are trying to make photography affordable.  I am blessed enough to have a well-paying full time stable job, so we are playing the long game – not looking to make much money out of it for a couple of years but more focused on building up on our techniques and experience (both photography wise and in business management) and obviously hoping to get a good customer base as well before we tweak our prices.

I do have some presets in LightRoom already set up.  Up until now it has taken me on average 2 minutes to edit a photo – now with the feedback I am getting on here it will likely start taking me longer than that – at least for the next few sessions 🙂 So we may need to look at our pricing structure again.

Thanks again.

[muzzman]

Nesgran:

Thanks for the advice.  I will try and find time to upload some to Flickr on the weekend.

In terms of gear:

– 4 x Elinchrom D-Lite RX2

– 6m x 3m white and black vinyl backdrops (permanently mounted)

– Nikon D90 with a 50mm 1.8d lens or the old faithful good at everything, excellent at nothing 18-200mm VR2.  (I know the D90 is getting a bit old now, thinking of eventually upgrading to a D7100 or D800 if we can afford to get it with some new lenses)

– And my wife went a bit crazy with buying props 🙂

[muzzman]

Bill:

I think I may have pushed the noise reduction slider a bit far – these were done before I knew about the masking brushes in LightRoom/Camera Raw – so it was done to the whole photo.  I will have to have a look at the unedited version to see if it’s the shot or my editing :-/

The particular image you are referring to with the selectively coloured book was for a pregnancy announcement – so they wanted the focus to be on the book, I do get your point though.

Our studio is in the garage at home with no airconditioning, and being in sub-tropical Queensland with unseasonably warm Summer and Autumn (Fall), most if not all the baby photos have been taken with the adults sweating without any heaters being on 🙂  So I don’t think that the temperature is an issue?

Thanks for the link, you haven’t been too harsh at all.

[muzzman]

Can I just say, wow, I was not expecting such detailed feedback, thank you so much to everyone.  I will try and respond to each of you in turn.

Overall with the editing, I was going for a particular style – the kind of almost overexposed, high contrast you see in some of these http://verveportraits.com.au/portfolio/baby-and-newborn and these http://www.youstudios.com.au/gallery/5601/Families_/_Children.html

Which when we first started I thought was the ‘professional’ look…

Now though, looking at it all again – and other studios – and from your feedback – I can see that we’ve probably gone too far in that direction (to the point of being almost paranoid about shadows) and we do need to incorporate some more depth/light and shade.  Thanks again, good to know at least they’re not horrible and we are wasting our time…

[muzzman]

Thanks cameraclicker, you are dead right in terms of lighting position, except we have two at the back as well when we use the white backdrop, mainly to get rid of shadows… may have to rethink this and do some experimentation.

We use Facebook because that’s where our clients (and potential clients) are – don’t really see a need for any other gallery platform (open to advice on this front though)?  We also have a web page: http://www.simplesnaps.com.au which has a series of galleria galleries connected to the same Facebook albums.

[Author]

Posts