This is my first attempt at any portrait style photo's as all my other shots have been primarily inanimate objects. Please C&C. 1. 2. 3.
1. I like how you captured the expression and joy. A couple of things come to mind: - Move back and zoom in (provided you have the space). The leg coming toward you is distorted and looks large. If you back up and use a longer focal length that "compresses" thee scene and objects will retain their proportion. - For people shots, focus on their face, specifically their eye (maybe you were) but wasn't sure, because.... - It looks slightly blurry due to what appears to be camera shake. 1/25 a second is pretty slow (even at 21mm), well, for me it would be. Maybe a tripod. If you have a speedlight, or at some point get one bouncing the light and balancing with the ambient light will give you more options to use a higher shutter speed. Although, I can understand if you wanted to use the natural lighting. - For my taste, I would do a more subtle vignette. Even a tiny amount adds greatly to the picture. 2. Good composition, the image may be slightly tilted. -For BW conversions I like to add a little contrast, it seems to make the image richer. There are many things you can do for conversion to really make a BW sing. At a minimum I will usually increase the contrast. -Similar to the first, it appears a little soft to me, probably due to camera shake. Although, your shutter speed was 1/60 on this one. Could still be shake, but it may also be the large aperture (f/3.5), probably one of those things or both contributed to the softness. 3. I like the composition and angle on this one too. Possibly over exposed just a hint. I think these are good, just a few technical things I noticed, but I like them.
I love the one where she's laughing. Laughing pictures make the best candids and sometimes very good portraits too. Very well done. I hadn't even noticed the leg until Tim mentioned it. But I think you could afford to crop it and keep the proportions. Just get the foot out of the pic and the rest could be attributed to the pants being bell bottoms. After you crop it, maybe just don't use the black corners effect and put a frame around the edge instead?
I really like the first one....even more so if the focus would have been on her face. The third one is really nice too!! Very nice colors...good focus...
Looks like I am going to be the odd one out. I think you had your settings right, and the lighting looks good, but I think the composition is off. They look like an average snapshot that turned out well, for a portrait it think there is too much going on.
