It’s Fix-It Friday at I ♥ Faces again!  It’s been awhile since I’ve participated, so I felt a bit rusty.  But this shot of Little Miss Cutie-Pie sure was fun to play with.  I mean really, who can resist that much cuteness?!  Certainly not her mom, who submitted the photo.  Great catch, mom!!

This shot has a lot going for it.  Super cute kiddo with an adorable smile…check.  Natural light pouring in from a window and providing soft shadows and wonderful catch-lights in the eyes…check.  Focus on the face and the background blurred to reduce distraction from said face…check.  And there ya go!  Three of the best ingredients for a wonderful portrait. 

The one distracting element, for me anyway, is the white shelf on the right.  So, I immediately decided upon a square crop.  I felt this photo lent itself to this crop very well, as her slight head tilt put the right eye directly on intersecting rule-of -thirds lines.  In other words…I liked it square. 

I also decided to do as much as possible in Lightroom, and I felt like the light in the photo would work well with a contrasty treatment, both in color and black and white.  I always begin by adjusting white balance if necessary, and with one click of the dropper tool on the edge of the white shelf, it warmed up the shot nicely.  Then I tweaked the following tools to get a good base to work from:  exposure, recovery, blacks, clarity, vibrance, tone curve.  I played with the crop tool and made a virtual copy of what I had done so far.  This is a wonderful tool in Lightroom that allows you to make as many virtual copies of your photos as you like, without clogging up your computer or sacrificing performance, so you can make as many different edits as you like, and then compare them to choose your favorite.  Veeeery nice!

Then I began playing with presets, and I landed on a free one called A-Game 2.  Sometimes presets give you just what you want with one click, but sometimes, as with action layers in Photoshop, they need to be tweaked as well.  So, I played with exposure, recovery, blacks, clarity and tone curve again.  I also used the adjustment brush tool to bring up the exposure a bit, just on her hair that was deep in shadow.  The whites of her eyes were quite blue at this point, so I used the adjustment brush set to desaturate to remove that color.  I also brightened the exposure (just a smidge) on the catchlights.  The dust removal tool was handy to remove a couple spots on her chin.

At this point, I was pretty much done.  However, I was noticing quite a bit of “noise” (grain) in this photo, and I realized it was because it was shot at ISO 1600 on a Canon Rebel XT.  I am not in any way knocking the noise or the camera!  I just wanted to make the point that different cameras handle noise differently.  As a rule, however, the lower the ISO, the less noise.  The shutter speed for this shot was 1/640. If the ISO had been set lower to avoid the noise, the shutter speed would have been slower.  And it’s possible this shot could have turned out fine with a slower shutter speed. But toddlers move pretty fast, and it’s also possible that a slower shutter speed would have resulted in a blurry shot.  Boo!  I say, use that higher ISO setting to ensure you get a clear shot and then just embrace the noise!    Thank goodness our digital cameras have the ability to produce images with higher ISOs, or we would miss an awful lot of shots!  And it would have been a shame to miss this one.

For my color version, I did want to go for a smoother shot, so here’s where I brought it into CS3 and used Noiseware, a noise reduction program that can be purchased to work inside Photoshop.  You have to find the balance between getting rid of noise and not over-smoothing to retain detail in your shot.  So, I try not to use it in a heavy handed way.  While I was in Photoshop, I went ahead and used Pioneer Woman’s Sharpen THIS action on her eyes, and the healing brush on a couple little spots on her face.  Then it was back to Lightroom for exporting.  I was going for contrast and some pop, so the shadows are a bit deep, but I love the way her eyes just pull you in!

I knew I wanted to work up a somewhat vintage black and white version as well.  The natural light in this shot was just calling me to it!  So I went back to my very originally edited photo in Lightroom and made another virtual copy.  In fact, I made a number of virtual copies so I could try a bunch of different presets and see which one I wanted to work with.  I ended up using a free one called BW Dependable.  Then I tweaked the tone curve and used the split toning tool to give it a hint of vintage color.  I reduced the clarity to give it a softer appearance, used the adjustment brush tool to bring up the shadows on her hair and added some overall sharpening.  For this version, I decided to embrace the noise by actually adding a bit more!  So, I brought it into CS3 and used the noise filter to add a little bit of monochromatic grain to the whole photo.  I also used Sharpen THIS on the eyes.  At this size, it may be kinda hard to detect the extra grain, but it was a subtle addition. 

Thanks for letting me play today!  Let me know if you have any questions.

It’s silhouette week at I ♥ Faces!  I really like silhouettes, and I don’t look for opportunities to shoot them nearly enough.  Hopefully this summer I’ll find some more.  This one is from two years ago of my sister-in-law’s family during a fabulous Oregon coast vacation.  It makes me happy!

As a Fix-it Friday contributor, I’m not eligible to win, just to play along! 

At I ♥ Faces this week, the theme is

~ Reflection ~

And not the thoughtful kind, but the I-see-another-me kind!

As a contributor, I’m not eligible to win, just to play! 

This shot was taken a couple years ago.  It was a cold, spring day in need of hot cocoa with marshmallows…do you see Ethan and me in the tea kettle? 

And another reflection shot of just me, taken last year, also as part of my dailies.  The caption I wrote with it follows…

Thinking…inside the box.

I look through my camera with my left eye, with my right eye squeezed shut and the right side of my face contorted in a grimacing wink.  I never knew how much until I took a series of shots to get this shot.  A little later, as I stood in front of my bathroom mirror to brush my teeth, I noticed lines on my face (the temporary sort you get when you fall asleep on a wrinkled-up pillow case) extending from the corner of my eye like stretched crow’s feet.  Gasp!  All that squinting to look through my viewfinder is causing the right side of my face to age faster than the left side!  Do I need to train myself to look with my right eye in order to balance this out?  I don’t think I’m coordinated enough to do that!  I can’t even put my coat on using my left arm first…my right arm ends up flailing around looking for my right sleeve and I have to give up, take it off and start again with the right.  Maybe I need to invent a photographer’s face cream, just to be used on the squinty side of the face, to keep it looking as fresh and fair as the opposite side.  Hah!  I believe this falls under the category of suffering for your art, right?

It’s self-portrait week at I ♥ Faces and the rules require you to be holding the camera (no tripods allowed).  So, I dug up this goof-ball shot!

As a contributor, I’m not eligible to win, but sometimes it’s fun to play along!

This week’s submitted photo is of this cute cheerleader. 

Here is some EXIF data:

f/4.5, 1/50 sec, 135mm, ISO 100

Zooming in, we can see that this photo has some sharpness issues.  Going back to that rule of thumb about shutter speeds (minimum shutter speed for a sharp photo is 1/focal length, which means in this case, the minimum shutter speed should have been up around 1/160 or so), we can see why this didn’t end up being a sharp shot.  1/50 sec is a very slow shutter speed for 135mm, unless the camera is on a tripod and the subject is holding very still.    The aperture is probably opened as wide as the lens would allow at this focal length, so the solution here would have been to raise the ISO to about 400 or so, which would have allowed the shutter to speed up.

I really like the natural textures and colors of the wall behind her, so I decided to try and enhance that feature of the photo.  After warming up the white balance and cropping very slightly in Lightroom, I brought the image into Photoshop CS3.  Then I employed the Color Burst action (one of my favorites!) from Jodi at MCP Actions.  I also used her Touch of Light action (free) to brighten her face, and I further brightened her eyes and teeth with the dodge tool.  I did heal a few skin blemishes on her face, though on this full-body-length shot, they really aren’t noticeable.  I used the Quick Edge Burn action (free) from Pioneer Woman to give the photo a vignette.

For a different look, I used Take My Color Away from MCP Actions, with the Chocolate Wishes layer turned on.

The theme at I ♥ Faces this week is pouting.  This is an old shot of Ethan, but I thought the pouty lip was appropriate here.  Even though I focused on his eyelashes, you can still tell this is one pouty face! 

*

No adult category this week…but there is an “Anything Goes” pet category.  As we don’t have pets, my pet photos are few in number.  I like this shot of Ethan with Grandma’s dog, Sheba.  Can you tell he likes her?  He practically begs for a dog at least once a week…and yet I am unmoved.  I guess I’m one mean mommy!  (At least when it comes to pets.)

As a contributor at I ♥ Faces, I’m not eligible to win the weekly contests.  I’m just playing along for the fun of it!  You can join in the fun, too, by checking out the latest and greatest at I ♥ Faces!

Another cute-kiddo photo was submitted for Fix-It Friday at I ♥ Faces!

Canon 20D, 50 1.8 lens at 1.8, 1/125 sec, ISO 100

Once again, I’m sharing the histogram as displayed in Lightroom, in order to see how this shot may have been improved in the camera, and to serve as a guide for how to improve it now.   There is a lot of blank, empty space on the right side of this histogram, which confirms that it is underexposed and asking for more light.  Three ways to introduce more light to the camera sensor are:  open the aperture, slow down the shutter and raise the ISO.

In this case, the aperture was opened as far as this lens will allow…f/1.8.  A wide-open aperture also provides a narrow depth of field, meaning the focus point may be sharp and the rest will nicely blur.  The closer you are to your subject, the shallower the depth of field gets.   Even though this shot had a very shallow depth of field, the focus is nice and sharp on the right eye.  That can be very tricky to accomplish, so bravo to the photog for nailing the focus here!  When zoomed in, the left eye isn’t quite as sharp as the right, and that’s because of the super shallow depth of field.  However, this really isn’t noticeable and doesn’t detract from this image at all.  The background is nicely blurred which allows all your attention to stay on the sweet face.

Since the aperture couldn’t have opened any wider to adjust for the exposure, we’re left with considering the shutter speed and ISO.  The shutter speed of 1/125 was obviously fast enough to ensure a sharp shot, which is great.  The rule of thumb we discussed last week says that with a 50mm lens, the shutter speed should at least have been 1/50 to ensure a non-blurry photo (of a stationary subject).  So, in theory, the shutter speed could have been slowed down a bit in order to let in more light for a brighter exposure.  However, this shot looks quite spontaneous (see that cute bit of tongue poking out?!) and slowing the shutter in this case may have  captured some motion blur rather than the crisp photo we have.

That leaves us with bumping up the ISO.  The higher your ISO number gets, the noisier (or grainier) your photo may be.  However, if you underexpose your photo and need to boost exposure in post processing, that also introduces noise into your image.  The least amount of pushing and pulling on your photo’s exposure in post processing, the better it is for your image quality.  So, in this case, bumping up the ISO in order to increase the light sensitivity of the camera sensor would have enabled a more brightly exposed image that wouldn’t need quite as much adjustment after the fact.  I believe ISO 400 would have been a more successful setting in terms of exposure for this image.

The Fixin’s

I pulled this RAW photo into Lightroom and first adjusted the White Balance.  I like to use the WB selector which looks kinda like an eye dropper tool.  Usually there is something in the photo that can be clicked on that should be a neutral color.  In this shot, I ended up clicking on the white of her right eye.  Then I adjusted exposure by dragging the exposure slider over +1.25.  This brings us to here:

The histogram is beginning to be a bit more balanced and the skin tones have more warmth.  At this point, I started playing with some presets in Lightroom, which are kind of like actions in Photoshop.  Presets and actions can be a place to get really creative and have lots of fun, and they can be a way to express your own personal taste and style.  This time, I rather liked what this preset did.  (NYKF – free preset found on this list – New York State of Mind.)  One click of the mouse and we are here:

This preset deepened the blacks and brightened the lights, brought some contrast and a zing of some interesting color.  Look at those blue eyes!

At this point, I used the Dust Spot Removal tool to get rid of some crumbs around her mouth and on her teeth, and then I employed the Adjustment Brush to brighten up the shadows around her eyes.  I decided to pull it into Photoshop (I use version CS3) and do a few more tweaks.  I used MCP Action’s Magic Powder to smooth out her skin tones, MCP Action’s Skin Cast Blast to tone down reds and blues and give a warm/golden appearance, Pioneer Woman’s Sharpen This to sharpen her eyes, the clone tool set to Lighten and 20% opacity to slightly brighten her teeth, and a bit of a curves adjustment to just make it all pop a bit more.  (Jodi at MCP Actions has written about Curves Adjustments and even has an online workshop about this powerful adjustment tool in Photoshop.)

Then I went back to Lightroom to play with the crop.  I really like the crop tool in Lightroom, and I had fun playing with it on this shot.  The girl’s head tilt is charming and endearing and gives this photo some movement and lines to consider when cropping.  When composing a shot in camera or cropping afterward, something to consider is the Rule of Thirds.  If you were to divide your photo into thirds with lines, left to right and top to bottom, the lines would intersect.  The idea is to place major points of interest at those intersections, or at least along those lines.  (Many cameras have focus points placed where they can help you compose your shot with this rule in mind.)  Not every photo should follow this rule (sometimes, rules are meant to be broken!), but in general, a photo is more dynamic when composed this way rather than placing the subject smack dab in the middle.

The Lightroom crop tool has some grids to lay over your photo to help you see your photo’s lines and consider some possible crops.  Here’s the standard rule of thirds overlay:

As you can see here, the lines from this grid aren’t really working with the lines existing in this photo.  Let’s see what else we’ve got.  (Just hit the letter O to rotate through the various crop overlays in Lightroom.)

This one’s interesting.  LR’s crop tool allows you to rotate your photo and keeps the crop inside the photo’s boundaries.  (On this shot, I’ve maintained the original aspect ratio of the shot, keeping it rectangular.)  See the lines extending from the corner through her eyes, and from the other corner through her smile, and the intersection taking place on her right eye, which is the focal point of this photo?  Here’s what it looks like cropped:

While I do like this, I think the angle may be exaggerated more than I would prefer.  Let’s try something else.

Look at those lines!  From the corner along her smile, from the corner down through her left eye, from the corner along her hair…

I’m liking this one.  But let’s try one more.  This overlay is kinda fun…

It’s a swirl!  (If you hit Shift+ the letter O while looking at an overlay, it will rotate the overlay so you can apply it to photos with focus points in various areas.)  See how the beginning of the swirl is right between her eyes, and then the line curves around through her right eye and then continues around her entire face?

It ends up being quite similar to the previous crop, but this one puts her eyes at slightly less of an angle.  I think I like this one the best.  And once again, here’s where we began:

Thank you to Carol for submitting this photo for us to play with this week!  And thanks to any readers who made it this far, for hanging with me while I rambled on about histograms and crop tools.    I am certainly not an expert in these areas.  I’m simply trying to share what I’ve learned with the hope that it may help someone else along on their photography journey.  I know there are many (many!) others out there who have greater knowledge and are better at explaining things than I am.  Hopefully, you will be encouraged to maybe try something new and have some fun!