Portraits

So I had a little time over at my nieces so my daughter and my niece put together their look so I could do a photo shoot. I have come to realize that my daughter is great a many things, but being photogenic is not one of them. My niece on the other hand is a total ham. So here are some photos from our mini shoot while it was pouring outside. I really didn't like the lighting that they had at their house but I tried my best. I even used one of her mirrors to be a reflector for some fill lighting. I did do touch ups so I will include both versions.

Photo 1

For this photo I took some of the shine off of her face (although I see a bit of a dark spot above her eyebrow which I didn't see until uploading this). I would go back in and fix that. But I cropped the photo. I also tried to eliminate a little bit her stray hairs that were popping out. I found the orange tie to be too distracting so I just cloned over it to take it out of the picture. I dodged her teeth to whiten them but I think it may have been a little too much. I think if I adjust the exposure to the tool it would help tone it down a little bit. 

 Photo 2

This one was originally too dark so I played with the color curves to brighten the photo and to take some of the green and blue hue out. I loved the curtain but the flash wasn't coming on for some of the photos so I did what I could and then switched to a new area. I also helped get rid of the bit of my daughter's bangs that were sticking up. I took away the dark circles under her eyes and I patched up her hole for her earring because it was funny to have the hole but no earring. 

 Photo 3

So I really liked this curtain in my niece's room but she wasn't quite tall enough for it. If it had gone full-length I would've been in heaven. Instead we decided to just do a head shot for this one. For this one I cropped to get rid of the black on the right. I also touched up a little bit of the shine on her face and she had a bug bite spot on her chest that was red so I touched that up. I did whiten her teeth a little bit and I think this time it looks more natural. I did notice that there were some sequin reflections on her upper arm so I used the clone or patch tool to take away those reflections and then the smudge tool to blend it a little bit more. 

Photo 4

So my niece really wanted to take a picture in this super comfy chair. She also loved the super fuzzy blanket so I decided to put the two together. We laid the blanket over the chair and took some pictures. The problem was that there were no good background places in this apartment so I really didn't like how her head is half in the blue blanket and half in the white wall. I cloned the blanket to bring the color up top but then the lines were too obvious so I then used the smudge tool to blend it all in. I know that made it look like an unrealistic background but I thought it kind of worked like the school portrait backgrounds they use. Another whitening of the teeth and I used the patch tool to get rid of her tan lines. I wish the photo was a little bit more in focus but considering I didn't think I would end up using this set of shots, I really like how it turned out.