Portrait of grand daughter

[johnd]

I had the honour of doing the photography at my daughter's wedding recently.
It was my first wedding as a photographer, and my daughter's as well. Talk about pressure.

This is a portrait of my grand daughter, Maya, taken at the wedding.
Good old kit lens.





I think it works better in colour, but I'd appreciate comments please?
I've also toned down the red hue in the first image.

Other images featured in my gallery.

Cheers
John

[TonyH]

Hi John,

an excellent shot of your Grand-Daughter.

I do prefer the colour version. May I suggest toning the reds down a little?

Being the main photographer, I hope you still enjoyed ( and recall the event!)

Tony

[birddog114]

John,
Colour version for me!
Great works.

[macka]

John,

Hope you don't mind (if you do I'll take it down) - this is just a 30sec conversion I did, and it's not perfect by any menas, but I thought yours brought out a little of the red on her cheek too much, and was a bit dark and grey generally.



Lovely image.

[Geoff]

Hi John,
I think the colour version works better too, it's a natural portrait, catching your grand daughter doing what she was, at that moment, in her own time. Nice one

[johnd]

Thanks for the comments Tony, Thanh and Macka.

Macka, the b/w conversion you did does look better. I'm afraid I'm a bit of a novice with b/w. I reckon I do less than 1% in b/w. Still, something new to learn. I guess if I want to do weddings, I'd better learn it quickly.

Tony, I'll go back and take another look at the nef, I might have overdone the reds when I converted it into PS.

Cheers
John

[Alex]

John,

I'll be the odd one out - I prefer your B&W to the colour. Nice photo. Looking forward to seeing more from the wedding.

Alex

[rooboy]

John, the colour version (and the subject of course ) is gorgeous. The B&W you posted doesn't work for me because the skin tones are quite harsh, she has some blotches on her cheek. Unless she's a closet alcoholic I doubt that these are true to life. Macka's B&W is much softer & friendlier, more appropriate for this subject

[marcotrov]

Gorgeous photo John, colour image here too
cheers
marco

[johnd]

Thanks also for the comments Geoff, Alex, Patrick and Marco.

I'm sure the b/w can work, it might just be that I'm not skilled enough in that area.

Cheers
John

[Trieu]

Nice shot, 1st colour is my pick, then Macka's one.

Great Shot!

[johnd]

Thanks Trieu
Cheers
John

[Manta]

Nice shot, 1st colour is my pick, then Macka's one.

Great Shot!

I agree with Trieu on this one John. The first one looks so much more natural to me.

I also hope you enjoyed the moment. I reckon I'll be an emotional wreck when my daughters' turns come around...

[PALL]

wow so cute,i liked all the versions.tha way pictures are displayed it also looks like a Photoshop color enhancement plugin addd" , lol.once again very good composition.

my one suggestion,a little shalow DOF can have made this a stunnig side portrate.only if the background was at some distance.

[johnd]

Thanks Simon and Pall.

Yes Simon, I did enjoy the moment, but it was a bit stressful.

The original colour one was the print that my daughter liked and that went into the album.

Thanks to everyone for their comments. What I've learned from this is I need to learn how to do b/w better

Cheers
John

[Nikkofan]

Hi John

I learned this method of B&W conversion from Matt K and I like it because it doesn't have the "flatness" that straight Desaturation or Greyscale conversion does:

In Photo Shop:
- Open Image
- Image - Mode - Lab Colour
- In the "Layers / Channels / Paths" palette, choose the Channels tab
- Delete the last 2 channels from the tab - you should be left with "Alpha 1" in the only channel left in the tab
- Do any other adjustments you want to do - sharpen, contrast, etc

When finished: go to Image - Mode - Grayscale
- File - Save As - save as a JPG, or whatever you want. If you don't go to Grayscale before you try to save, the only option you seem to get is to save it as a PSD. That's what I've found, using CS2, anyway.

You can also choose Multi Channels instead of Lab Channels. I've tried both, but find there doesn't seem to be any difference. All other instructions are otherwise the same.

This works a treat for me and I hope it might help you also. Good luck - btw, your granddaughter is a real cutie!

Lynn

[johnd]

Thanks for that Lynn. Now you mention it I seem to remember a post from Matt K about this.
I've bookmarked this and will give it a go.

Cheers
John

[robboh]

Great Shot John!

Congrats on the wedding shoot! Did you need a good stiff drink afterwards?? I sure did!! Actually, I needed more than a few, the one I did recently.

I prefer the colour to the B&W. The first colour one just appears overly saturated generally to me (eg see the flower on her dress), pulling back the saturation should resolve a lot of your skin problem. The second colour pic looks like it has a green cast to me, but this monitor at work aint that great either.

[johnd]

Thanks Robboh. No such luck with the stiff drink. I had to drive my wife and parents about 100k after the wedding. Yeah, I agree the first is a bit over saturated. When I re-did it for the 2nd, I pulled a bit too much red out, giving a slight green cast. I'll go redo it in between.

One day I'll start on the b/w technique.

Cheers
John

[mudder]

Another interesting way to convert to B&W where you can "adjust" the hue's and toning of the result is a technique on the Russel Brown site...

- Add a hue/sat adjustment layer
- Add a second hue/sat adjustment layer and adjust the blend mode to color,
- Now, play with the hue of the first hue/sat adjustment layer and as you change the hue, it changes the tonings of the B&W...

You can even target specific color ranges affected by choosing any specific color either from the drop down list of the first hue/sat layer, or using the eye-dropper...

Seems spiffy, allows lots of control and doesn't modify the original data as you're only using adjustment layers...

Might be worth a play

[johnd]

Thanks Andrew.
Another technique to try

Cheers
John