Guitar Playing

This one was rather difficult to shoot ... I think that I must have taken a dozen or more different shots of this guy ... he was playing on the patio of a restaurant, and the only truly good shot of him would have been to get myself seated in the restaurant (which is not where we wanted to eat). He was surrounded by these fake trees and I ended up sticking my camera, head, and arms into one of them to grab this shot with a long lens. Yeah. I felt a little obnoxious doing so, but after so many failed shots, it was all that i could come up with. :-) What are your thoughts? Do the people in the background (top left) distract? Is the DOF too shallow? Any other suggestions?

Any comments or ratings are appreciated! :-)

Nice photo, however as u sad i find the trees in the foreground a bit distracting, good job though. also i think the DOF needs to be very shallow for this type of shot, good job\though, best regards, RK!

Well, the image has a few problems here and there. I must say that I have had same experiance and the same few problems many more times than I would like to admidt.

 

I'll give you credit for going to all that trouble in trying to make the shot in the first place.

 

Three ADAGIRLS!

Quite a few problems indeed! Probably, my advice would be to get closer (with your zoom) and get rid of the wooden stand behind, also, choose as wide an aperture as possible in order to get a shallow DOF and get the backgound off focus. This works very well with portraits.

Cheer up! Weekend is here!

Considering the difficulties you had to shot him, the better thing to do, in my opinion, was to open the diaphragme at the max in order that the background will be totally blured. The objects you can see behind him are very distracting. Regards, Henri.

If you have more room to crop, you could easily improve this, imo. A smaller square, just around the man and guitar could work, I think. Background is a little busy, but I see why you wanted to go for it.

Kim - thanks!! I tried that idea and liked it. Here you go...

In addition to the crop suggestion, I'd say darken the top left and brighten the man & guitar to make him center of attention instead of the easel board behind. The surrounding branches and trees work somewhat as framing devices.

Well done for getting what you have! I agree with the closer crop. I think this is a situation where you got the best shot going without actually going into the restaurant.