phun with photoshop.

[petefontaine15]

here are some pictures i took last weekend of a couple that hadn't seen each other in a couple months and are "really really in love". sick, i know. but i took the opportunity to take unrehearsed photographs and try to capture the emotion and excitement. the last two are just individual candid shots that i thought turned out cool. the pictures were pretty basic, so i thought i'd go into photoshop and tweak them a little to get some interesting results. i was kind of going for the vintage magazine look slash quentin tarantino feel with the highlights and shadows on some of them while playing with the lighting options on others. let me know what you think, and thanks for your comments/critiques...

[GB1]

# 2 is the winner here. The others are funny but more like personal snapshots. # 2 has more potential as a photographic capture, but the background and lighting work against it. Might be able to do something in Photoshop etc with that.
GB

[petefontaine15]

GB, what do you mean by background and lighting? i toyed with the highlights and shadows to give it an old magazine feel if you know what i mean, might not have come across that way. i had to bounce the flash off the ceiling to keep from getting this awfully overexposed shot of the two of them. you think i should ditch the old vintage look and make it more realistic looking?

and thanks for the critiques!

[GB1]

Well, the background isn't bad... It just seems that there are some slightly unflattering or maybe uninteresting background shapes there. They are mostly blurred so it isn't bad (this is part of reason why this shot is better than the others). The bounce flash is successful in that it lights well from above, but it could use some frontal lighting... not a lot but some, so that we get see what's happening there better. Perhaps a second light shooting at 10-20% power. The contrast is a tad low overall, making it less exciting, but if that was the effect you were shooting for it sorta makes sense.

GB

[petefontaine15]

GB, i took down the red in the 2 photo and added lighting to the face and boosted the contrast. i'm having a hard time lighting the front of the faces without over exposing the entire photo... this one is more natural looking though. hopefully it looks better, and thanks for all your helpful advice... i kind of want to submit this photo into a contest or something now after all the work on it. you think it stands a chance?