"accidental" senior pics

lisarhinehart

Hello friends

I was hiking in the woods and bumped into a grandmother taking her grand daughters senior pictures. Unfortunately this happened at noon in dappled light, but I took a few minutes to get some shots for her and said I'd put them up on my website if they'd like to buy them fine, if not, ok. I think a few of them turned out OK, but I'm interested to see what others think-- c&c welcome, tips even more welcome.

http://lisarhinehart.smugmug.com/gallery/9248586_5msnx

Here are my favorites:
1.

2.

adbsgicom

Nice job! Especially since you weren't planning for it...

First one is nice; I wonder if you could crop it in up higher (as a second option) and lose the blown out spot behind her (and maybe brighten her a bit).

Like the treatment on the second one. Her arms look a little big, which may be your lens (as I'm coming to learn). Did you shoot with a wide-angle lens?

My non-professional 2-cents....

Tim Kamppinen

On the first one, the blown out ground is distracting, but nothing you can do about that now. I'd try to lighten the face a bit as it looks a little dark. That would help bring the viewers eye to her instead of being drawn to the blown highlights.

The second one is exposed well and has great facial expression, but her arms dominate the image. The distortion isn't directly caused by the lens but rather by being too close to the subject. Using a longer lens forces you to get further away, which causes the perspective distortion to even out and tends to "compress" the image in a flattering way.

There's nothing inherently wrong with whatever focal length you used here, but being aware of what happens when you get close to the subject, you could have posed her differently so that the arms weren't so much closer to the camera than the rest of her.

All that said, these (and the others in the gallery) are very nice for an impromptu shoot with a stranger. I doubt grandma go anything close to this quality in her shots. I wouldn't be surprised if you got some sales out of this.

Scott_Quier

First - I have no doubt grandma didn't come close to what you got. These are quite good.

Room for improvement - with the exception of only one photo, all of them are pretty centered. When taking portraits in an environment - it is sometimes nice to see an interaction between the model and the environment. Your #6 is a good example of what I'm talking about - it looks good to me!

lisarhinehart

thanks
Thanks for your c&c-- I appreciate it and agree. Well said, and it gives me something to shoot for/ learn. Lisa

Wil Davis

Hey, it's great that you volunteered to take some pics for them. One of the most important things to remember with portraits is to make sure the eyes (or the eye nearest to you) is in focus; not just approximately in focus, but razor sharp…). The problem with auto-focus is that the camera has no idea of what constitutes an eye, and will often get confused by the hair or jewelry or whatever, so (IMNSHO) it might be better to focus manually (see #2).

The skin has to look right, i.e. be correctly exposed.

I took a quick look at the ones you posted on your web-site, and although the range of poses were sort of OK, her expression was almost exactly the same in each picture (oh, dear!); about what you'd expect for the first 15 mins of a session, until you get comfortable and relaxed with each other, after which the magic should start to happen (if you're lucky, that is!).

Hey, nice gesture, thanks for sharing!

I wonder how the pics taken by her Grandmama came out…

- Wil