Portrait first timers

jbr13

Just wanted to get some feed back. THis was myself and a friends first attempt at doing some portrait work. We were asked to take some pictures by our local Fire Department, and we volunteered our time and effort for learning purposes. We both decided that the flags could have been fixed to stand out a little better, but our major question is the lighting? What do you all think?

Thanks
Jason

GP Images

On my monitor here at work these look very yellow.

jbr13

Yes, I processed these on my laptop and it needs color profile set. Wish I would have notice earlier. Sorry for the bad images on here.

Chrissiebeez_NL

for portraits, they look (besides yellow) a bit too contrasty in my opinion..

Scott_Quier

Comments (I'm not going to sugar-coat it, so be warned ):

• Lighting looks flat in all three and more than just a bit under-exposed. To help give a 3-dimensional effect, try to get some pleasing shadows on the face. This can be easily accomplished with some off-camera lighting. As a starting point, do some google searches on "loop lighting".
• In your images, the face is too centered in the frame. For next time, might want to think about putting the eyes somewhere near the top third of the frame. You also might be more successful if you filled more of the frame with your subject.
• In the second photo (of the young lady) you either have her too near the backdrop or your aperture is closed down too much as the backdrop is not nicely blurred as it is in the other two.
• It's already been mentioned, but you have some serious White Balance issues to correct here.