First Senior Portraits

Trina · May 25, 2007

NJMAN: Thank you. She knwos me kinda well. But my brother was there and its his girlfriend so i think she may have been a little nervous because he was there and so was her mom. I plan on working with all the settings this weekend so that I can get a feel for everything. I think my family might get tired of me takign pictures of them all weekend. But I don't think they will mind too much!

Christie Photo: I agree. I wasn't a fan of the sleeveless shirt either. But it's what she insisted on wearing. I don't think it looked well with her body type. And thank you for the edited picture. It looks much better.

I'm still trying to learn the post processing. I'm going to post some family picture i did a while back. Which I think are much better.

eppievojt · May 28, 2007

Compostionally, they are uninteresting - they look like snapshots, not senior portraits. They're shot (and cropped) so loose. It's as if no thought was given to what should be included in the picture. Posing - a few of her poses aren't horrible (1,5,6,7 could yield decent photos, I suppose), but if you pose her like you have in those pictures, you need to position yourself in a completely different manner than you did (other than 5, where you just need to move in closer). For the bench shots, why would you shoot that from the side? For a portrait? It just doesn't make any sense.

DOF is a disaster, which has already been acknowledged. You say DOF is your weakness. That makes no sense. It's a fundamental concept of photography. One of the first you should learn. If you want shallower DOF, use a fast lens, open the aperture, move closer to your subject, use a longer lens, distance your subject further from your background.

I hope this was a freebie. Keep practicing and read some basic photography books. Getting better at this is as simple as having a willingness to study, and shooting whenever you have the chance. Good luck - you should be able to see marked improvement rather quickly if you really pursue it.