Ashanali

I think you need to reshoot. It would be much better composed with the dog on the otherside of your husband... and your husband's singlet; much too distracting. Perhaps he could take it off

JS - nice shots at the festival

talk about a guilt trip! When are they getting married again? Maybe you can tell them to do this http://savvystudioscompetition.blogspot.com

Very cute Macka

bootiful!

Even the pros don't have it easy with in-laws. Two weddings ago the mother of the groom wasn't ready for the pre-wedding photos and turned up 5 minutes before they were ready to go for the ceremony, however the bride's mother was well and truly dressed and ready... so obviously there were plenty of pre-wedding photos with bride and her mum. Apparently mother of the groom had a very large meltdown in front of everyone at the reception about not being in many photos with her son. Alex apologised and said he was terribly sorry and offered to do photos for them there and then. Every photo the mother is scowling into the camera. I have no doubt that she is now telling everyone about the very rude photographer and his favouritism of the bride's mum. (although we think there is a little jealousy between the two mums. Bride's mum is a former beauty queen and looks it. Groom's mum, well... doesn't. ) If you can seperate yourself from family, it's much easier.

The last colour version is very nice Ripley :rolleyes:

Really fascinating actually. Thanks for sharing that.

Wow. I wonder how that happened? Can you do a 100% crop so we can see it clearer? It's kind of interesting in a morbid way.

Every time I talk myself out of buying one, ILTBY rocks up with her photos and then I want one again.

You may want to do something with your exposure but playing with the fill light, recovery, blacks and clarity is what will give you an HDR effect brigie bear - Photoshop HDR action sucks! The plug ins are much better as you've discovered. I have a different PS plug-in to you but it produces some great results also. It does suck doesnt it!!! Which one do you use? I could tell you, but then I'd have to kill you. I use Nik Efex Pro - it has several actions but the 'tonal contrast' action is the one for HDR.

You may want to do something with your exposure but playing with the fill light, recovery, blacks and clarity is what will give you an HDR effect brigie bear - Photoshop HDR action sucks! The plug ins are much better as you've discovered. :p I have a different PS plug-in to you but it produces some great results also.

She's gorgeous Warls. I like your first two images - you've captured the life in her eyes

You really need to shoot in RAW for it to work The human eye sees about 11 stops of light RAW captures 7-8 stops of light jpeg only captures 5-6 stops of light HDR means High Dynamic Range. If you shoot in jpg, you are automatically limiting how much range you have within the image. So while you might get something verging on an HDR effect with a jpg, it still won't look quite right. Go RAW next time and see how it looks.

They're great ILTBY Keep posting

There are tricks to getting personality to come out in posed portraits... however understanding the basics of light and your camera comes first - the rest takes time.

Yep. There are easier ways to get HDR effects without having to layer three images. (only slightly applied to this image) Shoot in RAW Shoot at as low an ISO as possible (the lower the ISO the more range of contrast there is in the image) Process in lightroom, lots of 'recovery', lots of 'fill light', add black then add 'clarity'

Yep. You need to select the brush tool. If you're looking at lightroom you can see on the left hand side the histogram and directly underneath that there's a picture of a paintbrush with a halo around it. Click on that. Underneath you will see an exposure setting. If you drag it to the left, anything you paint with become darker if you drag it to the right anything you paint will become lighter. The beauty of this is that you can paint many different areas of the image (and lift the brush off the image in the middle of it) and you can move the slider AFTER the painting has been done. EG. If you set it to -.90 and do an edge burn but then decide you want it lighter, you don't have to redo it, you can just move the slider up to -.50. If you want to make one area lighter, then paint another area and make it darker, be sure to hit the button that says, "new" in between the change.

Becandarch... I think you need to practice a whole lot more... lots more. Get waaaaay more photos of your husband and post them here for our perving... um, I mean, constructive criticism.

This is a family I got to shoot yesterday. All natural light in their loungeroom and only very basic editing (as you can see)

Go and head in to the November challenge... somewhere in there I've shown set ups you can do at home using natural light (it will work for the dogs also). The November challenge is "back to basics" and portraiture is a part of it. It might help.

Great photos everyone (Rocco - I'm still hanging out to see more photos )

I was wondering when it was coming out Well done.

Ravvyk - have you headed into the wedding photography groups on Flickr? Get in there and absorb as much as you can while you have the chance.

Who me?