Mr. Lonely

[ScapeGrace]

Another in the series. That look of sadness was not in the least feigned. Poor guy had to stare at the jungle gym while I was busy being "creative." Suggestions?

[n8]

there seems to be something interesting going on with the focus here...

[spiraleyes]

there seems to be something interesting going on with the focus here...

Agreed. I thought my eyes were playing tricks on me. His face is in focus, but his hat is completely out. Parts of his jeans and boots are in focus, but more of the shirt isn't.

[clayhaus]

Yes, the softness bothers me. Also, he is too centered. If the image is very sharp, you could crop in tightly to his upper torso (arms included) and head for a very compelling portrait study.

[gahspidy]

Once again i like what you got here with your son as a subject. I agree the focus and sharpness looks like it was altered in processing by adding some soft focus around him?
I dont feel it works or was needed if that was the case. Some undsharp mask applied to this brings out the boy a lot more.
I really only have a problem with the framing. Your centering him top and bottom, side to side and i think placing him off in the lower left corner by adding more top and side in front of him sets it off real well. I added the framing quickly in an edit if you'd like to see. I would explain the process.
Still, a fine photo.

[ScapeGrace]

Um yes I blurred the bg because I thought it would look better if he stood out. I'm going to try to fix the blurriness of his hat and shirt. Also try cropping it a bit. Thanks for all the advice guys. Keep em' coming!

[ScapeGrace]

Ok here's my second try, lemme know what you think. Improvement?

[gahspidy]

Grace, your edit helps. The space in front of him brings a better composition and keeps from having him centered.

This is something of what i had in mind about more at the top and side.

I think the added room at top really brings the charm of your boys size and gives more sense of place. You may or may not agree, but this is just how i see it going.

btw, we normally do not edit and repost other members photos without consent which is usually stated in our signatures here, but in this case we had a PM about this.

[gahspidy]

To add more frame to a photo that does not originally have more you can increase your canvas size by selecting image>canvas and then your options box will appear.
Click on the arrows to anchor those sides so they do not increase. For this photo, I only wanted to add top and right side canvas so I anchored left arrow and bottom arrow.
Then i selected 2" for height and 2 for width. there is also an option for selecting the color of which to fill the added canvas and by using the eyedropper tool select a color in your photo that closly matches the color of the content you will be adding. In this case, the wood panel.
Once you click ok, the canvas will be aded.
I used used the clone brush to sample the wood panel and fill the blank canvas. the clone brush takes some practice.
If your using Photo Shop CS5 I believe you can use the Content aware fill method which was made for just this sort of thing.

hope this helps

[ScapeGrace]

Oh wow, that is a definite improvement. Everyone has been saying to add more space here or there I just didn't know how. Thank you soooo much, that was extremely helpful, I had no idea you could do that without butchering the original. 1 more reason to love photoshop. Thank you very much Gary for sharing!

[GB1]

I think Gary's edit really makes it jump up the charts. He now stands out from the background and also has a better negative space to subject ratio. Cute kid.

G

[ScapeGrace]

Yes, he did an excellent job. Wish I'd found this site earlier. And yes, he's pretty cute. Just had his 5th bday. Thanks GB1