Am I Ready to Start Selling?

[Scatterbrained]

Personally I think you have a great start here. You have an excellent locations, great colors (not the subjects skin however), good poses and decent composition. The subject is posed well with non branded, non patterned clothing (something lots of people don't think of) and I don't see anything egregious like trees growing out of heads, arms cut off at the wrist, etc.

As has been pointed out however, the focus. . . well. . . there is none. I won't beat this to death other than to say you've received some solid advice. Stop the lens down a bit (f/1.8 is too shallow for a headshot, really, it is), use your AF, and try to avoid focus/recompose techniques in close quarters and/or with shallow DOF. If you need to, shoot loose and crop in post.

The colors here are nice, but the skin tones are awful. He looks like he's contracted some sort of purple jaundice. Be mindful when editing colors that those edits can have an adverse effect on skin tones. Personally I use Dan Margulis' CMYK technique (link goes to an introductory article) for checking and correcting skin tones. Tones that look ok on the screen may not look ok in print, so it's good to take the time to ensure you get them right. It also helps to have at least a rudimentary color managed workflow; i.e. calibrate your monitor .

 

[TheBromad]

Personally I think you have a great start here. You have an excellent locations, great colors (not the subjects skin however), good poses and decent composition. The subject is posed well with non branded, non patterned clothing (something lots of people don't think of) and I don't see anything egregious like trees growing out of heads, arms cut off at the wrist, etc.

As has been pointed out however, the focus. . . well. . . there is none. I won't beat this to death other than to say you've received some solid advice. Stop the lens down a bit (f/1.8 is too shallow for a headshot, really, it is), use your AF, and try to avoid focus/recompose techniques in close quarters and/or with shallow DOF. If you need to, shoot loose and crop in post.

The colors here are nice, but the skin tones are awful. He looks like he's contracted some sort of purple jaundice. Be mindful when editing colors that those edits can have an adverse effect on skin tones. Personally I use Dan Margulis' CMYK technique (link goes to an introductory article) for checking and correcting skin tones. Tones that look ok on the screen may not look ok in print, so it's good to take the time to ensure you get them right. It also helps to have at least a rudimentary color managed workflow; i.e. calibrate your monitor .

Thanks man, I noticed the skin too and was trying to fix it.... I still have some tweaking to do on these so I'm going to spend a little more time on that.... I really appreciate the feedback!

 

[Derrel]

I went through these earlier and edited them by dodging and burning and applying some sharpening and clarity boost, and also some edge vignettes...they looked better.

 

[TheBromad]

I went through these earlier and edited them by dodging and burning and applying some sharpening and clarity boost, and also some edge vignettes...they looked better.

Awesome could you show me?

 

[Derrel]

Do you want me to post the edits?

 

[unpopular]

I'm seeing a LOT of posterization.

My guess is you're under exposing and/or shooting or editing in JPG with heavy post work. I think you need to work on your overall IQ before selling.

 

[TheStupidForeigner]

The pictures are ok but I felt they were all a bit similar too each other.

On top of what other people have said maybe you could get a cheap yongnuo flash for around $30 to add some more options and make the subject stand out more, reflector also works but I like the drama a speedlight gives.

I did a similar shoot a few days ago and also put a blue gel ($1 on ebay) on my flash then counter with the white balance to bring out the red in the leaves and make the subject stand out even more

 

[astroNikon]

I went through these earlier and edited them by dodging and burning and applying some sharpening and clarity boost, and also some edge vignettes...they looked better.

Awesome could you show me?

You profile, if you look under your Avatar states "Photos NOT OK to edit"
So even though he posted them he pulled them to comply with your profile about photos. You should change that if you want to see them again.

I think he did a fantastic job on them

 

[ClaptonsGhost]

On the bright side, your eye for composition is pretty good. But, yeah, I hate the post processing on these.

 

[TheBromad]

Do you want me to post the edits?

Sure that's fine with me

 

[Derrel]

Image 1 needed some sharpening applied to the subject, and a bit of darkening of the frame edges, as well as burning in on his face and ears. Image 9 needed the background burned down a bit. Same with image 3, with the falling leaves--it had bright areas that I burned down in Lightroom, freehand, just using a brush and the burn tool.

 

[TheBromad]

Image 1 needed some sharpening applied to the subject, and a bit of darkening of the frame edges, as well as burning in on his face and ears. Image 9 needed the background burned down a bit. Same with image 3, with the falling leaves--it had bright areas that I burned down in Lightroom, freehand, just using a brush and the burn tool.

What do you use for post?

 

[Derrel]

These days I use Lightroom almost exclusively. It is very rare that I need to go into Photoshop CC on a portrait image. Some of your images were tricky to edit because they were already converted to 8-bit JPEG files, so the shadows and highlights did not have the malleability of a full bit-depth raw image file.

 

[TheBromad]

These days I use Lightroom almost exclusively. It is very rare that I need to go into Photoshop CC on a portrait image. Some of your images were tricky to edit because they were already converted to 8-bit JPEG files, so the shadows and highlights did not have the malleability of a full bit-depth raw image file.

Yeah I shot them in raw and I tried using rawtherapy but I'm not impressed with it and was thinking of buying Lightroom. Does Adobe do subscriptions now or can I buy the software at one price?

 

[JacaRanda]

Lightroom and Photoshop | Adobe Creative Cloud Photography plan