Okie dokey, here goes.

A lady really wanted some photos of these two girls (Mother and daughter, but only 6 months apart in age ;( ) together.

I had to do some major PS to accomplish the goal. Since I've stared at it for a while, I thought I'd get some fresh eyes on it to see what you think.

Is it obvious (I know, I've already tainted the jury by saying it was PS-ed) and where?

I'll post a converted original later on.

Jim,
whether or not it's been PSed is, to me, irrelevant. It's whether or not the image works and overall it does for me.

I'd open up the shadows a little so you can see more of those black dogs but, other than that, it's a nice mother/daughter portrait. 6 months apart? I assume it was an accident?

Jim

Thanks Jim.

They are both rescued, so I guess accident probably describes it. They also both had puppies again just before being rescued. I suppose it is more correct to say they were pregnant when rescued, and had the puppies in their foster home.

The photos are for an adoption web site to get them a permanent home; hopefully together.

I don't have an issue with PS one way or another, I just wanted some fresh eyes that might say "you missed a spot" or something

Here's the original:



and some more of them here:
http://www.pbase.com/jimpoor/ldcr

if you like the image, id say you did well PS'ing the arms out. . .

Good work. . .

I question the lens focal length and distortion, (there is nothing wrong with distortion if you use it properly in the shot), but in this case I think you tried to get a wider shot and instead of moving back with a longer lens, you moved in with a wider one and distorted the mothers face.

I dont think it's bad to use wide lenses, I like them a lot but if you want more "true" you need to shoot above 50mm. for a shot like this, I would have been at 50 or better so as to NOT distort either subject.

I think you did a very nice job cleaning up the arms. I think if you invested in some show leads for these sorts of things, you would save yourself a lot of PS time. They zip out really fast.

I am not a fan of the wide angle distortion unless it is done for a funny effect, and is very extreme, almost fisheye. When it is done just a little, it looks like it was done on accident.

It is a pet peeve of mine though as I have always been very careful to keep the distortion to a minimum. I think being further away is less bothersome to the dogs too, same thing with small kids

Thanks everyone. I've been experimenting with the 14-24, but my favorites are the 70-200 and 105.


Thanks for the tips on staying above 50mm and show leads. I kind of like the "in your face, elongated snoot look" but I'm sure it isn't for everyone. (By the way, mom, is the little one).

I'm really going to need a smaller zoom than the 70-200 eventually, the 14-24 is definitely not going to be the workhorse for this sort of thing.

I've gotten pretty good at removing the big 3/4 and 1 inch leads that the SPCA uses, so I bet show leads would be a piece of cake. Any particular brand/type/supplier recommendations?

Thanks again
Jim

Oh yeah, here are a couple more:
Spring



Summer


Both



I opened up the shadows in Spring's head shot, but left Summer's as I think they add to the "please adopt me" feeling of the picture. What do you think?

I like the new added shots. If you want the adopt me look, I would ad a bit more breather room around them so they are not so in your face. If they were my pups I would like them as is. But for a prospective owner, they need to get to know the dog first before being that close!

That's a really good point. For the adoption sites, I go back and forth on trying to get as much dog as I can into a tiny space and better composition.

I'm working with several groups now and they run the gamut as far as the space they allow. The toughest group only allows 250 pixels and a max size of 10kb. They want head shots and full body shots too. I almost got them to go to 500 pix a while back, but they opted not to. I even offered to host 800 pixel images for them to link to in case they were concerned about bandwidth.