Graduation

[Fortigurn]

Over here you 'graduate' from kindergarten. This necessitates a 'graduation ceremony', and of course a tiara (if you're a girl).









Mixed lighting was a challenge, and of course all photos were candids. See that ghosting on the tiara and ear on the last girl? Is that camera shake or something more annoying?

[ozimax]

Some nice photos here. I have been to a few of these "graduation" ceremonies in Japan and so have some idea of how they operate!! They certainly take them seriously!

On a technical note, the image colours seem wrong and I think need correcting. They seem to be overly reddish, but a simple correction in PS will make them better, at least on my monitor!

Cheers,

Ozi

[Fortigurn]

They are a little pink, but not more than I wanted (I wanted the colours to be warm, not cold, and skin to be slightly pink not white). I might have my monitor calibrated a little differently to you.

[Fortigurn]

Hmm, they're certainly a lot more red on my monitor here at work.

[Marvin]

Yes they seem very red to me too. Cute pictures however! You have captured some gorgeous girls. Number 2 really appeals to me - I like the fact that the framing is a bit looser.

[devilla101]

Yep, a bit TOO pink. Cute shots though

[Bindii]

Yep they are red alright... time to callibrate me thinks..

love that first shot... she is gorgeous even...with the missing teeth...lol

the little girl in the second image has such a dreamy look on her face that you can't help but adore the shot... very well caught...

[Fortigurn]

Thanks for all the comments. I'm definitely going to recalibrate, the colours look a lot more pink here at work.

Marvin, I'm glad you liked the looser framing. I experimented quite a lot with framing during the shoot, and I am preferring the looser approach myself.

Bindii, dreamy is exactly the right word to describe the girl in the second image. I rather though that photo captured her personality well, and I'm glad to see it did.

Here's another dreamy little darling, in a shot which needs some colour correction but shows the annoying mixed lighting I had to struggle with.



Any suggestions on how to deal effectively with white and gold fluorescent lights in a room with a low ceiling? I bounced the flash off the ceiling, white balance set to fluorescent, and hoped for the best. I had stupidly set my camera to JPEG instead of RAW, so I couldn't do anything about WB afterwards.

The first girl is one of my absolute favourites, and she quite dotes on me as if I were an older brother (she's an only child, which probably explains it).

The last girl is actually my absolute favourite, and I received a wonderful thanks from her mum when it was time for the parents to all make their speeches. My Chinese isn't great, but it was good enough to know that she thanked me at least three times in the most glowing terms, which really touched me.

Here's my favourite shot of her from the graduation day, showing her glorious 'phoenix eyes' off to perfection.



Of course it could do with a little reduction in saturation and some colour correction.