“The photographer captured the loving relationship of the couple, and the woman's direct gaze with the catchlight in her eye reinforces that feeling.” —Monica Cipnic
© Andi Grant, Virginia Beach, VA. Gear: Canon 5D Mark II with Canon 50mm f/1.2L USM lens, handheld. Exposure: 1/400 sec at f/3.2, ISO 125, shot in RAW.
Photographer’s statement: “I did the post process in Adobe Lightroom 2 and finished it with a nik colorefex cross process filter. I chose this picture because, of this family session, this photo received the most comments on Facebook.”
Our critics say:
Monica Cipnic: What makes this such a successful image is that the photographer captured the loving relationship of the couple, and the woman's direct gaze with the catchlight in her eye reinforces that feeling. The setting is great and the composition is strong. The only distracting things for me are the very hot highlighted areas-- his forehead, the gradations in her hair, and the bright white stripe going down her back (also the posterization spots on her sweater). I think by taking the highlights down a bit, there would be a better balance of the subjects and the late day sunny field location.
Mason Resnick: I’ve never been a big fan of the cross-processing effect. I feel it’s a bit of a gimmick. That said, I think the photographer does an admirable job of keeping that effect fairly subtle and the result is a retro 70’s look that is kind of endearing. I agree with Monica that the photographer captured the couple’s loving relationship successfully. Even the solar flare adds to the image’s ambient feel, and the faces are well exposed with no objectionable shadows. I do think a slightly tighter crop, eliminating some of the bottom and left, could help the composition.
Jack Howard: This backlit highkey style is all the rage these days, and this is a very nice example of the genre. But I still want to pull the quarter- and mid-tones down a touch to build some overall density. As for the pose and focus: She is perfect. Great expression, great engagement, tack-sharp focus. He's got a nice expression, but is just a touch soft. It's a couple, so I'm wishing they were both tack sharp. There's enough distance to the background, and enough wiggle room with equivalent exposures that this could have been shot at f/5.6 or f/8 to keep them both tack-sharp with still a nice bit of softened background by cheating the focus between the two.
