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Photo Critique

Welcome to the Photo Critique corner of Photo Lifestyle dot com.

I recieved this request for a photo critique from Jade Mayari this morning. What a precious baby photo! Here’s what Jade had to say about it:

Here is a baby photo of my daughter laying on a blanket and the sun was not really out that day and it wasn’t overcast either and it made the picture come up better than I expected. It was taken outside with a Kodak Easyshare 4.0megapixel camera but we used the outdoor setting and possibly that’s what made the colors so vibrant? I love the colors in this photo and it’s one of my favorites.

Indeed. I looked up the Kodak Easyshare 4 megapixel and discovered that while some people are unhappy with the slow start-up speed, it focuses quickly, and produces the brightest colors of any pocket digital camera. The new model of the Kodak Easyshare is integrated with Wii for easy storage and sharing, and has a very reasonable price tag. Good camera choice, Jade!

The colors in this adorable baby photo are brilliant, and it’s obvious this kid is full of life. The removed shoe and tousled dress show she’s been squirming big time, and she looks very happy indeed to be outdoors in her colorful clothes and blanket.

As to the photo critique, I feel a bit uneasy about the angle I find myself looking at this photo from. In fact, when I first saw it, it seemed that the subject was mildly upside down, and I caught myself tilting my head to one side to look into the baby’s face.

Here’s the same picture cropped to a more pleasing angle. It’s not a total solution, as I’ve had to hide her precious pudgy feet, but you can see that it would have been a better picture if Jade had just twisted the camera a tiny bit before squeezing the shutter.

One important component in photography that is missing from this photo is depth of field. Depth of field relates to how close and and how far the camera is able to focus, but it also means simply how much close and far you’ve added to your composition. This photo’s basically two dimensional as the baby is on a flat surface, and the photo is taken from a rather high angle. The green grass is so bright and beautiful, it would have been lovely to have a bit more of it, and have some close up in the foreground, and a background of green as well. This could have been achieved by simply kneeling down in the grass, taking the picture from a 45 degree angle, and zooming out a bit to show more grass in the photo. This would have added a three dimensional depth of field, and made the photo a real contest winner.

Next time your in the mood for snapping a baby photo, I’d recommend taking three pictures instead of one. One from above, one from a 45 degree angle, and one from much lower down, almost at the baby’s level to achieve a profile with large grass blades in the foreground. I think you’ll be surprised by how much more you like a photo with more depth of field.

Thanks for the great photo, Jade, and congratulations on your purchase of the Kodak Easyshare 4 megapixel camera. It looks like it was just the right camera for you!

Tags: baby photo, depth of field, kodak easyshare, photo critique

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