How do you cope with this?

I was going through and re-looking at shots I did at my very first wedding, in

2005.

 

One shot that has haunted me since then (I'm probably a bit obsessive), is the

following shot - it was shot on Ektrachrome E100VS and scanned on a Nikon Super

Coolscan 9000ED with "Portrait" balancing done in VueScan.

 

The subject here (groom's brother) had just had this baby a few months prior

and things had been difficult. I snapped this moment which the bride and groom

loved - but the man in the background, in the bright red shirt to me distracts

from the composition.

 

I sometimes struggle with isolating the subject in a condition like this -

while I'm able to "bokeh" some things out, this is one situation where that

just wasn't going to work.

 

How would you handle this shot? Editing the area out in post? Color work? I

dump DNGs from my scans, so I could work the color (although I'm slightly

terrible with digital editing, but I have some tutorials lined up in the new

year to fix that).

 

Thoughts, comments, complaints welcome. A few intial notes - this scan is a

little on the dark side, but I haven't done ANY post except color balance on

this image.

 

Thanks in advance!

 

Cheers,

 

-Andrew<div></div>

Andrew,

 

Even without a red shirt, the big guy in the background is going to be distracting. I would just him him out.<div></div>

Well it looks to me this shot would be ideal for a simple crop. You could crop to just show

the groom's brother holding the baby and even the aspect ratio would still be correct.

Simple, quick, easy. Rather than struggling to make a problem look better, just elimanate

the problem altogether.

Apparently I typed: "I would just him him out."

 

I think one of those hims should be "crop". ;-)

I tried blurring, smudging, etc ... doesn't work. I would simply crop the red shirt out.

 

ray

do it like we do in the darkroom, just burn the sucker out, or dodge, whatever works.

Don't forget to do another crop of the guy in the red shirt, one where it doesn't have some guy with a baby detracting from the shot of him ;P

Pull the curtains on him?

 

(the composition is still a little wacky tho)<div></div>

I was so focused on color, I didn't even consider a crop. Thanks for the thoughts, folks, this will come out quite nicely now.

 

Cheers,

 

-Andrew

Or something like this?

I agree with William Porter: but, assuming the enlargement can carry, I would go in even tighter to crop the young girl and the hand bottom right: both IMO are distracting from the moment and the deleterious to the artistry of the image.

 

Also this capture is better framed portrait, not landscape: landscape is not emotive enough, too much negative space.

 

This is lightened a little also<div></div>

William - thanks for the input on the portrait vs. landscape - really no excuse on my part, except that they had just done a half hour of dancing when I sat down to quickly eat. Look up, grab camera, snap. Did not think, just shot... and hence the results. Didn't even fire fill flash (as the blown out highlights from outside the tent show)

 

Cheers,

 

-Andrew

Here's my take. Composition through the lens is critical.

It may have been a tender moment but the image doesn't really capture that it just looks like a father holding his baby, no eye contact and the faces are not very visable, the image quality is poor. I don't understand all the effort, I would not give this shot to the client and would have tried for a more emotional shot. Not tying to be critical just inform on what I see to better your editing process.

Andrew, just for my own personal edifcation, may I ask why you chose to use chrome film over negative film?

Steve, thanks for the valuable input. This was my very first wedding, done after the bride (a friend) saw a bunch of my personal artwork and asked if I would be willing to shoot for her. I loved the experience, but realised I was in way over my head.

 

Bob, for your edification... :)

 

Maybe this makes me a terrible photographer, but I am terrible with color neg films. I just can't translate my vision into the image on the film. Chrome? I hit on it with far, far greater success. Up until this shoot, I shot Chromes and B+W exclusively, with B+W being more for my "photojournalistic" work (I use the term loosely; more in the "unposed, natural experiences", "street", and "life" photography). When it comes to color film, neg just never feels right - the colors just don't feel right, the saturation, the grain... it all looks wrong to my eye. Grain with B+W, that's fine. But for me, color begins somewhere around 200 ISO, and that is a stretch for me.

 

The downside is, of course, the cost: processing, scanning, retouching the scans, and submitting for print. I'm heavily considering a switch to an all digital workflow, but it's going to be a hard transition for me.

 

I told the bride about this, and she was very comfortable. She wanted something particular (my approach), and we worked with it. They brought someone in for the posed and ceremony, and most everything else was up to me.

 

So, at the end of the day, it's what I work best with. In this case, a shot that I tried for and failed at, I wanted to reach out to the community and explore options for dealing with this. In retrospect (Steve's comment made me reflect on this), I wonder if I would have selected this picture for the bride if I had not learned the story prior to the wedding?

 

 

Cheers,

 

-Andrew

Cool Andrew! I figured you had a good answer! Please post more pics if you can. I am interested in color saturation, such as skin tones. Thanks, Bob

Try moving the light source. I touched them up a little too but you get the idea.