Critiquing My Own Photos
Something troubling recently. I’ve decided to critique my own photos!
Critiquing ones own photos isn’t really the best way to go, as other people will be able to see so many more faults, but when one sees faults on ones own, that says a lot! An artist often sees many faults in his own work, but there needs to be a separating line drawn between faults actual and faults imagined.
The subject of today’s photos is little Melanie Clampett, a rodeo trick rider in the travelling circus her family works for. In this shoot, Melanie is spending the day out in the forest.
In this first photo, the thing which stands out to me most is the overexposure, which washes out the color on Melanie’s face and socks. This can be corrected, and decent photo editing software will include a shadows/hightlights feature which can help correct this. If lucky, there will be enough information about the overexposed area to recover it by playing with the shadows and highlights of the photograph.
Because Gimp 2.4, the image editor I use, does not have such a feature, I used an old method:
- Duplicate the photograph layer.
- Desaturate the top photograph layer.
- Invert the top photograph layer.
- Gaussian blur the top photograph layer.
- Set the top photograph layer to overlay mode.
- Flatten image.
- Play with levels (or curves) to fix up colors.
It’s not a pretty process, and it doesn’t always work very well, but when it does work, it might just be enough to save a photograph. How’s the result look?
Unfortunately, her face still has overexposure, but now there’s extra yellow and orange colors around it! At least playing with the curves did improve the look of the scenery, giving more vibrant greens.
Let’s move on.
Here, the ground in the background is not level. This may leaves the viewer’s head tilting to the right, resulting in mass neck injuries is the photographer is popular and has a lot of people viewing their work! There may also be reports of people falling out of their seat as they adjust their view to straighten the image in their mind.
In Gimp, I will start by rotating the image by an angle of -2.21. Not only will this level the ground in the background, but Melanie will appear to be leaning forward a little, rather than leaning completely against the tree.
There are no overexposed areas in the foreground, although the background could use help. To correct this, I’ve duplicated the photograph layer, creating what will be a separate “background” layer. I duplicated this layer, setting the mode to “multiply”. After repeating the last step, my layers appears as:
- Multiply
- Multiply
- Multiply
- Multiply
- Multiply
- Normal
- Normal
I merged the top six layers, leaving one very dark (multiplied) layer, and the original layer. (I did this easily by hiding the original layer at the bottom, then selecting “Merge Visible Layers”, followed by unhiding the original layer).
By adding a mask to the top layer, and a gradient from blach to white, I was able to only show the top-left of the background layer.
The top layer came out much too dark and saturated (was I over-eager?), so I lowered is to opacity 70. The bottom layer looked a bit pale in comparison, so I modified the curves to increase the shadows, creating darker, more vibrant saturated colors.
Sorry for no step-by-step screenshots of the process! Here is the final result, after cropping (due to the rotation).
Now the remaining problem is that her overall straps are hovering high over her shoulders. That one’s not something a simple image editing job will fix!
Here, the lighting was nice, and only minor editing would be needed to bring out the colors in Melanie’s face, hair, and outfit. So, where was the big problem with this one? Again, in the pose.
Look at how her arms “hover” over the branch. This was an unfortunate compromise in order for her center of gravity to hold her on the branch. The branch was high enough up that it wasn’t easy to position her.
Maybe she is playing “Superman”?
The next photographs are intended to show Melanie resting on a rock after playing in the tree.
Once again, Mr. Sun shines brightly, and colors wash out. This was actually the best of a handful of photos, the others even more washed out.
Lowing the EV value helped this image, but it came out too dark because of it. Lightening the image in Gimp has lead to “noise” on her right cheek. That’s not good!
Finally, this angle fails to show the degree of angle at which Melanie is lying back against the rock. Instead, she looks like she’s lying flat out on her back. (That, and her panties are showing, which is a definite no-no. Care should have been taken to hold the camera in a lower position, where the lower blade of grass would have been higher up in the photograph.)
I had taken some photos of this scene as landscape (shorter and wider), but they came out too overexposed in the background. It’s a shame, because using a fallen tree for a prop sort of calls for a wider view, rather than a taller one.
Finally, Melanie is seen playing under a (not visible in the photograph) fallen tree (different from the one in the above photograph). Because of the “low ceiling” of a falling tree over, and the general “down on the ground”ness of this scene, it was difficult to see to get the pose right, and Melanie’s left arm looks to be in an awkward position. That one mistake ruins the photograph, as the arm is in an unnatural position.
A combination of light-based problems and model-position problems has plagued this photo shoot. I must be dilligent in doing better next time!