Beach Portrait pictures

[SeanL]

Took some pictures of one of my buds at the beach today to practice my portrait photography. Any thoughts or suggesions on these photographs would be appreciated. All shot in RAW and with a D70 and a Nikkor 70-300mm G.

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

 

[seven]

Since he's backlit you need something to light him up other than the fill flash. His poses also look pretty awkward. Number 5 is a pretty natural pose but it really bugging me that I can't see his whole head. My eye is being lead out of the frame because of this. Also, the horizon is tilted, fix that. I think adding more contrast will make it look much better too.

In my opinion getting him to wear his sunglasses take away from portraits, since the eyes show lots of emotion needed.

Try to have better composition too, by using rule of thirds and other such techniques. Every single one of these is centred, aside from 5 which was closest to the rule of thirds, and also the best one.

 

[SeanL]

Since he's backlit you need something to light him up other than the fill flash. His poses also look pretty awkward. Number 5 is a pretty natural pose but it really bugging me that I can't see his whole head. My eye is being lead out of the frame because of this. Also, the horizon is tilted, fix that. I think adding more contrast will make it look much better too.

In my opinion getting him to wear his sunglasses take away from portraits, since the eyes show lots of emotion needed.

Try to have better composition too, by using rule of thirds and other such techniques. Every single one of these is centred, aside from 5 which was closest to the rule of thirds, and also the best one.

Thanks for the tips, I'll have to use an external flash next time, I don't have a great one however, I'll need to save up for a SB-800.

As far as composition on portraits, for me it's kind of hard to put the rule of thirds into play when you're shooting vertical and this close up to the subject. I do agree though that maybe in 2 and 6 I could have moved the subject a little more to the left in the frame.Here is one of the shots I shot as a landscape which I put rules of thirds into effect:

Any other thoughts?