practice graduation pictures (8 images)

qsjewl

these are the first practice graduation pictures I've taken, so I'm a little nervous about posting them, but I want to learn and I know this forum will help me as it has so many others.

I had my sister pose for these and she was more than willing and we had a lot of fun. I don't have any PS software, so these are straight from the camera (I do plan on getting PS CS3 soon).

you can view the entire shoot at: http://picasaweb.google.com/thepowells6/PracticeGraduationPics02

C&C welcome.

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6.


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8.

DI-Joe

First one is great, what lens did you use? Coming along I see.

jeffmeyers

Good work!

Oceanlights

Personaly I love the 6th shot. Looks very beautiful.
Others are great too.

Scott_Quier

OK - Since you asked for it.
A couple of "rules" to which you need to pay more attention:

1. Get the eyes in focus. This is critical! Without this, the photo should never see the light of day.
2. A "classic" rule - showing the backs of a woman's hands is usually not flattering. Classically, you want to
   show the outside edge.
3. Watch your white balance - in some/most, the skin tones are not consistant from one to the next. If any of them are right, the rest aren't.

Now for C&C on each photo

1. I generally like the pose and the composition. You have the background nicely OOF (out of focus). Need to supply a little more light to her face to get (1) catachlights in her eyes, (2) open up her eye sockets a bit, (3) get some light to fill the shadow under the bangs on the side of her face. The verticals in this shot aren't - straighten the photo.
2. The pose is very nice (you have some very nice angles working for you here), but very centered. Move her a little further to the right of the frame. You cut off her toe. Very "flashed". Try slowing down the shutter to get more ambient light and then reducing the power of the flash. If you are going to show skin, you need to clean up the minor blemishes. That huge spot at the top of her right thigh - is that a birth mark or a just a red mark. If the latter, you need to get that out of the shot.
3. I like that we can see her class ring. You have some nice light on her face as well. Don't really like the hair across her eye. Need some flash/light for a catchlight in her eyes. What's that blue/green blob to the side of her head? With that strong vertical element of the lamp post (?), this might be a case where centering her a bit more (thus moving the lamp post closer to the edge of the photo) might be a good thing.
4. You have some very nice light on her hair (upper right corner) and on her left cheek - nice. Need to get your verticals actaully vertical. Watch your backgrounds - very distracting element there...
5. This should be cropped at the edge/corner of the wall behind her. The light is great - love the catchlights in her eyes - just the right size! Watch your focus - this one is focused well in front of her hand - making the eyes very much OOF. I would drop her left hand out of image - let her rest her left shoulder on the wall - this will open up her stance a bit which will probably make her more comfortable and that will show in the image.
6. Square on to the camera - few women are flattered by that position/pose. I like the head turn. I think raiser her right should would work better. That would complete the "S" curve of her body, make it a more "classic" pose.
7. FOCUS - is well behind her face (check out the grass at her hip area to find the focal plane). The light is very, very nice. A little fill light on her face would help open her eyes a bit. Loose the watch. I like the shoes (though the soles are showing wear) but would like to see this without the shoes as well. I like how you don't have her pointed straight at the camera - the slight angle from the camera is nice. Tilt her head toward the higher shoulder. Clean up skin blemishes on her arm. VERY IMPORTANT - watch your color balance. This one is way off.
8. OOF. Centered - move her to the left in the frame. If you have the room, move her a little further away from the flowers in the backgroun to better throw them OOF. I like how the flowers are repeated in the flower in her hair.

qsjewl

DI-Joe wrote:

First one is great, what lens did you use? Coming along I see.

thanks for the encouragement Joe. I used a 50mm.

qsjewl

Scott_Quier wrote:

A couple of "rules" to which you need to pay more attention:

1. Get the eyes in focus. This is critical! Without this, the photo should never see the light of day.
2. A "classic" rule - showing the backs of a woman's hands is usually not flattering. Classically, you want to
   show the outside edge.
3. Watch your white balance - in some/most, the skin tones are not consistant from one to the next. If any of them are right, the rest aren't.

Now for C&C on each photo

1. I generally like the pose and the composition. You have the background nicely OOF (out of focus). Need to supply a little more light to her face to get (1) catachlights in her eyes, (2) open up her eye sockets a bit, (3) get some light to fill the shadow under the bangs on the side of her face. The verticals in this shot aren't - straighten the photo.

Scott, thanks so much for taking the time to critic every picture. I'm out of town right now and not able to edit any of the photos, but I will remember to straighten them as soon as possible.

2. The pose is very nice (you have some very nice angles working for you here), but very centered. Move her a little further to the right of the frame. You cut off her toe. Very "flashed". Try slowing down the shutter to get more ambient light and then reducing the power of the flash. If you are going to show skin, you need to clean up the minor blemishes. That huge spot at the top of her right thigh - is that a birth mark or a just a red mark. If the latter, you need to get that out of the shot.

hindsight is 20/20! I see now where I cut off her toe! She does have a huge birthmark on her thigh, that's why I had her facing this way to minimize it in the photo as much as possible.

3. I like that we can see her class ring. You have some nice light on her face as well. Don't really like the hair across her eye. Need some flash/light for a catchlight in her eyes. What's that blue/green blob to the side of her head? With that strong vertical element of the lamp post (?), this might be a case where centering her a bit more (thus moving the lamp post closer to the edge of the photo) might be a good thing.

Is this the picture you were referring to when speaking about the backs of hands? I'm not sure how I could have gotten the ring in there without showing the back of her hand...
she refused to let me 'fix' her hair! I'm not sure if I see the blue/green blob you are talking about. I guess it's just something in the background that I'll have to fix once I get some software.

5. This should be cropped at the edge/corner of the wall behind her. The light is great - love the catchlights in her eyes - just the right size! Watch your focus - this one is focused well in front of her hand - making the eyes very much OOF. I would drop her left hand out of image - let her rest her left shoulder on the wall - this will open up her stance a bit which will probably make her more comfortable and that will show in the image.

thanks for the suggestion of cropping it, I agree with you that it will look much better. also thanks mentioning the left hand; didn't see that til now!

6. Square on to the camera - few women are flattered by that position/pose. I like the head turn. I think raiser her right should would work better. That would complete the "S" curve of her body, make it a more "classic" pose.

great suggestions, will have to keep that in mind next time....so much to remember when shooting!!

7. FOCUS - is well behind her face (check out the grass at her hip area to find the focal plane). The light is very, very nice. A little fill light on her face would help open her eyes a bit. Loose the watch. I like the shoes (though the soles are showing wear) but would like to see this without the shoes as well. I like how you don't have her pointed straight at the camera - the slight angle from the camera is nice. Tilt her head toward the higher shoulder. Clean up skin blemishes on her arm. VERY IMPORTANT - watch your color balance. This one is way off.

yeah, this one is out of focus, but I couldn't for the life of me get it right. I'll have to keep practicing. Can you explain the color balance? I'm not sure how it's off? but then again, I'm a beginner.

8. OOF. Centered - move her to the left in the frame. If you have the room, move her a little further away from the flowers in the backgroun to better throw them OOF. I like how the flowers are repeated in the flower in her hair.

will try to remember to pay attention to not having the subject centered.

again, thanks so much for all the helpful advice. I'm still learning how my gear works, so hopefully the pictures will only get better with time.

qsjewl

jeffmeyers wrote:

Good work!

thanks Jeff for your kind words

qsjewl

Oceanlights wrote:

Personaly I love the 6th shot. Looks very beautiful.
Others are great too.

thanks oceanlights for the comments

Scott_Quier

qsjewl wrote:

Is this the picture you were referring to when speaking about the backs of hands? I'm not sure how I could have gotten the ring in there without showing the back of her hand...
she refused to let me 'fix' her hair! I'm not sure if I see the blue/green blob you are talking about. I guess it's just something in the background that I'll have to fix once I get some software.

Back of the hand - see the first photo in the gazeebo. You are right, getting the ring in the shot can be quite difficult and I think you did it in a natural way with this photo. The blue/green blob is actually white (I looked at it on monitor better than the POS I have at work) is to to the left of her head and above her shoulder.

qsjewl wrote:

yeah, this one is out of focus, but I couldn't for the life of me get it right. I'll have to keep practicing. Can you explain the color balance? I'm not sure how it's off? but then again, I'm a beginner.

To get the focus right on this, you need to use the correct focus point. It appears that you were quite close to her and focused on her face with the center focus point then recomposed and shot. That would account for the focal plane falling behind her that way. Correct technique - compose the frame much as it appears here. Select the focus point that is over her face (and only that focus point). Activate the Auto-Focus. Make the photograph. Here's a good page (link) to start your studies into why focus-and-recompose doesn't always work so well.

Color Balance (aka, White Balance) refers to the fact that we like to see white things being white and skin tones being correct. The color of the light illuminating our subject will often create a color cast, causing our whites to be pink, green, magenta, etc. When we look at a person in what ever light, our brain is doing a lot of "color translation" for us, correcting for the different colors of light. But our cameras (and film, etc) are stupid - they can't look at a scene and make the correct adjustments without help from us.

So, when shooting, you need to be able to tell the camera what color of light is being used. This is usually done by setting a Custom White Balance (see your owner's manual to learn how this is done). Or, you can take a picture of something you know is of a neutral color, like a gray card. I use a WhiBal card (link). When you have that, you can use that in your post processing to determine what corrections need to be made to get the color corrected.

qsjewl wrote:

again, thanks so much for all the helpful advice. I'm still learning how my gear works, so hopefully the pictures will only get better with time.

I'm happy to offer what I know. I just hope it more helps than hinders.

I am also still learning and hoping that my photography will get better with time, practice, and experience. We are all in that same boat - some just have more mistakes in their past.:D

idiom

Not to take anything away from the photos, but I just wanted to say thanks to Scott for his C&C on all the threads in this forum.

Scott, your C&C are so helpful to new photographers, thanks.

Scott_Quier

idiom wrote:

Not to take anything away from the photos, but I just wanted to say thanks to Scott for his C&C on all the threads in this forum.

Scott, your C&C are so helpful to new photographers, thanks.

Thanks for the comps! I do try.