First Post-Family Portriats from Last Weekend

Corinthiancharm

Hello Everyone This is my first post to the forum... I've been lurking for a little while, so I thought it was time to go ahead an start getting some personal feedback. I'm fairly new to photography. I started my own "alphabet photography" business in October of 2009, and have ventured into other areas since then. I am really interested in portrait photography. Here are a few from my session last weekend. Any comments and feedback are appreciated!

p.s.--the hubby just got me a new D90, so I was experimenting with that! I used the kit lens for all of these shots.

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3.

VayCayMom

Hi and Welcome!! I have to ask, what is an alphabet photography business? Glad to have you post! You are going to like it here!

Ok I am going to comment on #2... the pose is what is bothering me . It took me a LONG time to accept the fact that I am responsible for how the client looks, and my job is to make them look as good as possible even before the shutter clicks. I felt my part was just taking a good photo and if they looked frumpy or messy or whatever that was their fault.

Here dad is a little thicker in the middle than the mom, but the pose is making it worse and when you look down towards the bottom of the frame he is taking up 2/3 of the photo. The main reason is his posture while holding the baby, he is doing what parents tend to do, sway the back to rest baby a bit on the hip.And that causes his tummy to stick out.
Ideas to improve this; correct his posture, place baby on stool, or prop him up on that fence in shot 3. Or have mom hold him. Mom looks like she is leaning in and hunching her shoulders making her look even thinner, so have her straighten her back bringing her shoulders back a bit. I saw this tip for seated children but it might work for someone standing as well. If you touch their lower back and upper back between the shoulders at the same time they automatically straighten up. One more pointer is to have the larger person be the furthest from the camera to balance out the couple. Since she is quite slender this won't have a negative impact on her at all.

In number 3 he looks about 40 lbs lighter. You could swap their positions but I think they look fine as is, but they could straighten their backs a bit.
I have no training in photography, so the posing issue just seemed like more work than I wanted to do, but it hit home to me when I did a shoot with a pal of mine and she had modeling experience, and that made it all much easier, BUT the photos were also much better than any I had ever taken, and I began to see the light......

Qarik

welcome! if you could post larger images in the future then that would help wrt to critique!

Are you processing your photos after? These look straight out of the camera..they all could use some contrast, a touch more expousre, and saturation.

I think you could have shot with a larger aperture to blur the background as well. The bg is 1 and 2 are mildly distracting.

Keep at it!

Corinthiancharm

Thanks so much for the feedback!
VayCayMom: I definitely see how the way dad is standing in the picture makes him look much heavier than he actually is. I will pay more attention to my posing next time!

Alphabet photography is where you take pictures of everyday things that look like letters, then use the pictures to spell out a name or a word... it might be easier to understand what it is if you see a picture of it... my website is: http://www.corinthiancharm.com

Qarik: I am still very uncertain about aperture settings. Can you offer any suggestions on how I can know what setting to use? I am slowly learning how to use Gimp, but I am still learning on the post processing. I usually get scared and think that I am going to far with my pp... guess not!