I took this shot of my son Justin with a $70 Canon 50mm f/1.8 lens wide open in front of my Christmas tree (custom white balance). I had a cheap clamp-on light to my right shining down onto a sheet of metallic gold poster board that I was bouncing into his face with my free hand (my first time using this technique).
Posing was simple... "OK, Justin put your hands down and give me a great big SMILE!! Uh... or don't. Either way." I was aiming for a Librodo expression, but I think kids only do that in Asia.
Processing? Nahhhh... Well, only levels, a slight saturation boost, a little USM and colorization on the eyes. Cloned out a faint seam on the hat, a "bald" spot where he was pulling his hair up, a tiny secondary catchlight, and the edge of a background light at the bottom left corner. I applied an overall gaussian blur of 6 to soften the lights, then carefully used the History Brush to bring Justin back into focus. A light application of Noise Ninja to clean up the grain, crop and post. See? I barely touched it. ;-)
Now lets see how a dreaded "kid shot" fares in the voting...
...dreadful, apparently.
Statistics
Place: 39 out of 241 Avg (all users): 6.0130 Avg (commenters): 7.5833 Avg (participants): 5.8739 Avg (non-participants): 6.1607 Views since voting: 2460 Views during voting: 380 Votes: 231 Comments: 19 Favorites: 1 (view)
This is really a cute shot. The bokeh in this shot seems nicely done to me (although I'm sure no expert there.) It compliments the subject without being a distraction.
The expression on your son is priceless, and much more typical I'd venture to say than an overly posed shot. Personally, I like the lighting you have here. I think it gives a warm feeling to his face and makes his features the focus of the whole photo. The chest area might be just a little dark, but I think it works here and I'm really not sure I'd like the photo as much if that area was lightened.
I think it might have been improved a bit if his right elbow was included in the shot. Good catchlights in his eyes, although his overall facial focus seems just a bit on the soft side to me. I'm not sure if it's focus, or merely a softening effect you've given it. It's not distracting and I think it's just a matter of taste as to how "crisp" you want his features to appear.
The only other thing that might make a difference is his location within the frame of the photo. He seems to be more in the lower part of the frame. I think I might prefer a bit more bokeh on either side of him, not so much over the top of him. When I play with the framing, and crop off just a bit of the top, it seems to bring the attention to him even more, yet retain that nice bokeh effect for the background. Just my opinion.
Hope this is helpful. Beautiful shot of your son IMO.
Ah, well... at least I held onto a 6. I understand that this is a kid shot, and he's not doing anything particularly interesting, but a TWO?! I would be absolutely ashamed to give anything less than a 5 to this image for Bokeh. *sigh*
well, shannon, at least you kept your string of 6+ finishes alive ;-)
i didn't get a chance to comment on this during the challenge, but i have a moment now. i think you deviated from your own game plan on this one. you produced a technically top-notch image that met the "blobs of light" interpretation dead on, but the lighting from the top seems to take the warmth out of the image and give it a "studio" feel. not to take anything away from those who did comment, i think it was this subtle imbalance in lighting that led to all the uncommented 3s, 4s, & 5s that kept you off the front page. i agree with debi, though: file this under "this is how we'll do our Christmas card this year!"
I imagine this will rate very high. While I don't normally care for kid pictures, this particular kid's cute, it's technically a good photo, and the lights do create an appropriate bokeh effect. 7.
Great example of good bokeh in the background, but the rest is a rather uninteresting (but cute) shot of a kid. Nice play on words in the title though. Heh.
Great bokeh, nice composition, fantastic capture of that look/expression. I do wish his other elbow wasn't chopped off in the crop, but that's not really a big deal. One of my favorites so far :)
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