Image Critique Request

Hi Fletcher8

Personally I think the latest version is almost there and it's a beautiful family portrait. Although I still believe that the boy's eyes and the girl's on the right of the picture still look slight unnatural.

I often hark back to something I was once told by an an extremely good family portrait photographer who makes an incredibly lucrative living from this genre. When he presents the images to his clients not one single person of the hundreds he's worked for has said 'Thats a great image, but the f-stop could have done to be slightly wider or the whites are a little burnt out there' At the end of the day all they see is the beautiful smiles of their kids, and I'm sure the parents family will love this image.

I prefer the second. In the last the grass looks like its dying.

If there was evidence of a glowing sun, it would perhaps look ok that colour

Hullman, your point above is right in one aspect ... If there are technical deficiencies in a family portrait photographers professional work then yes, most clients won't say anything. But many won't go back ever again.

I agree with Stuart - in this group the boy does look a little strained. Also the skin tones don't seem quite right - a bit too pale and, as Nigel commented, slightly yellow. Perhaps the whole image needs a bit less brightness, together with a hint of pink in the skin. The surroundings look better in their natural colours, but they could be toned down to make them less imposing, with both a gentle vignette and a slight reduction in saturation. E.g. -




Just my opinions, of course.

Cheers.
Philip

For me the last one is preferable. I've avoided commenting on this before now as I don't feel qualified, I'm no expert in portraits. However, I've succumbed to temptation and so I'll give an opinion based on what my gut feel is and what I like / don't like.

I don't like the feet, for me they clutter the image

I like the pose (except the feet)

I don't like the bright area of grass behind the people

I like the eyes in the third shot, but not in the first one

I'm not sure about the grass in front of the people, it is a little distracting, but not a massive issue for me

I like the natural setting

It's a nice image and one that a lot of people would be delighted with, so my critique may be harsh, but this is a photography Forum (isn't it?) and if we don't give honest feedback it's not worth giving any. If this were my shot I would get rid of the feet and crop it to a more letterbox format.

Hope this is helpful!

Regards
David

Much better. I was going to suggest some vignetting to centre the eye towards the subjects. I'd darken the top middle a bit more as well.

A lot of good sense has been put forward. I've been looking at the image for a while and the arrangement is basically a great idea. The pitfall for me is the melee of feet. If this were one person then the feet could be arranged neatly, whereas here they are pretty much all over the place. I would have either choreographed the feet to be all the same pose, or not included them at all.

Remove the feet from the equation and we have a nice triangular composition.

Agree with this and he looks a little strained too. Perhaps if he was using his shoulders to prop himself up a bit (against his mother and sister) it would have been better. This might have helped obscure the feet too! Easy in retrospect though isn't it. It's a nice shot and I'm sure they'll love it.

Like the vignette treatment. Using such a vignetter to darken the feet and perhaps adding a bit of blur may further help.