First try at senior pics.

watchmen

I bought my d40x last year and have been a lurker on here ever since. And well last week my father told one of his friends that I would take his girls senior pics. Well I personally didn't think I was ready so I told her I would try it but I wouldn't charge anything. Anyway I was looking for some C&C on these. They were taken with a d40x, 50mm 1.8g, and a sb600 with a TTl cable. Thanks and please be honest. Thanks a bunch!





1.





2.










3.

Tim Kamppinen

The first one is very nice. The background is beautifully out of focus, her face position follows the "rule of thirds" and the light is soft and pleasing, although it could stand to be a bit more directional. The other two suffer from problems with composition mostly. Having the hand and foot cut off in the second one is awkward, and in the third one there's nothing going on in the top of the frame and her elbow is cropped out in a distracting way IMO. Another thing to think about is that she's not looking at the camera in any of these shots. Of course that's not a requirement for each photo but some eye contact is good in at least some of the shots (I'm guessing you took photos like that too, though). Here it looks like she's actually interacting with someone else which detracts somewhat from the "portrait" feel of the images. There's also quite a difference in skin tones between 1&3 and the second photo. I like the warm tones of the second image, personally. Whichever you prefer, it's good to make them match fairly closely unless there's a specific reason not to (if you wanted to imply/show that a photo was taken at sunset, you might let the white balance go very warm, for instance).

Also, good work putting the sun to her back in #2 and using it as a rim/hair light.

watchmen

Thanks for the input! I totally missed the skin tone being different. I did take some with her looking directly into the camera but these were imo the best I took. I really have to start paying better attention to crop when taking the pictures. The second image was the only one I was able to set white balance correctly since she was wearing a white shirt. So that is prob most of my problem with the skin tone. Do most of you use a white balance card when shooting?

Photosbychuck

Hi watchmen

Nice first try at senior photos.
I agree with Tim's comments about chopping off body parts.
She also has the same big smile in all the photos.
It would be nice to have some photos with a more natural smile.


Take Care,
Chuck,
www.icurdigital.com

watchmen

Thanks Chuck! I would have posted this one but IMHO it's just not as good as the others but here it is! It seems like every pic I took I took off a hand!