C&C: Senior Photos Shoot

[feg94]

Below are a few selections from a shoot I did last week for my brother's senior pictures. I'd really love to hear some critiques, I'm admittedly a semi-beginner and love shooting portraits and want to make them better. Thanks!

 

[D-B-J]

Not bad at all, but these would have benefitted immensely from just a little off camera fill flash. Do you have one? They also seem a touch dull--lacking contrast and clarity.

Jake

 

[Derrel]

Do you by chance happen to have a low-priced UV or haze filter on the front of your lens? Because all of these have a very hazy, "flat" look to them...and it looks almost like it happened at the time of capture, and not in post. WHatever the lens is it produces unpleasant, nervous bokeh on the out of focus foliage and woodland type of background scene you have in this session. There's just an unpleasant nature to the lens used...the pics are not fuzzy enough to be considered soft-focus or arty, and not sharp and clear enough to be viewed as modern, digitial images...they fall sort of in-between.

I think the one of him opening his shirt to reveal the Murica T-shirt would look better cropped to a square, eliminating the big tree behind on the left of the frame. On the one with him and his phone, I'd try and elevate the exposure on his face a bit, and boost the contrast on the shot, maybe go with a crazy "effect" processing look, like a cartoon-like color, or a very high-contrast, four-tone B&W "litho film" type look. Not sure about the squatting down shot, but the last one is okay.

My honest feeling is the best way to make your brother's senior photos better is to re-shoot the session with a clean lens, and a good lens that will produce nice, contrasty images. I am not confident that editing is what will improve these; a re-shoot would be a great way to get more material to work with!

 

[D-B-J]

Took the liberty to edit your photo a bit.

Added clarity, contrast, bumped up the highlights and decreased the shadows, added a vignette, whitened his teeth, brightened his eyes, saturated and golden'd the greens, and added some sharpness.





Jake

 

[rexbobcat]

They do look like they have potential! I do agree with DBJ though, I think they could benefit from more aggressive editing.


PS: that's actually a good thing! Most of the time the editing critique is along the lines of "way too much editing."

 

[feg94]

That looks great! I basically uploaded these pre-edit but I'll be sure to take my time to enhance. To answer your last question -- No I don't, I have limited equipment at the moment.

 

[feg94]

Do you by chance happen to have a low-priced UV or haze filter on the front of your lens? Because all of these have a very hazy, "flat" look to them...and it looks almost like it happened at the time of capture, and not in post. WHatever the lens is it produces unpleasant, nervous bokeh on the out of focus foliage and woodland type of background scene you have in this session. There's just an unpleasant nature to the lens used...the pics are not fuzzy enough to be considered soft-focus or arty, and not sharp and clear enough to be viewed as modern, digitial images...they fall sort of in-between.

I think the one of him opening his shirt to reveal the Murica T-shirt would look better cropped to a square, eliminating the big tree behind on the left of the frame. On the one with him and his phone, I'd try and elevate the exposure on his face a bit, and boost the contrast on the shot, maybe go with a crazy "effect" processing look, like a cartoon-like color, or a very high-contrast, four-tone B&W "litho film" type look. Not sure about the squatting down shot, but the last one is okay.

My honest feeling is the best way to make your brother's senior photos better is to re-shoot the session with a clean lens, and a good lens that will produce nice, contrasty images. I am not confident that editing is what will improve these; a re-shoot would be a great way to get more material to work with!

I'm not entirely sure about the lens, I'll take a look at it as there's no filter used...I'll take your editing suggestions into consideration, thanks!

 

[The_Traveler]

I basically uploaded these pre-edit

Upload your best effort so any comment you get is something you don't know.

Note the blue cast

 

[feg94]

I basically uploaded these pre-edit

Upload your best effort so any comment you get is something you don't know.

Note the blue cast

Yeah, the white balance is obviously off...Thank you for bringing that to my attention!

 

[thebasedsloth]

These were shot wide open, at f/4. Thats what cause the softness and lack of contrast! On cheaper lenses, Like your tamron, its never a good idea to shoot with the maximum aperture. Set your camera to aperture priority and make sure you stop your lens down to about F/8 - f/11, It'll improve the sharpness A LOT. You'll also want to bump the iso up and shoot at a faster shutter speed. I noticed you were shooting at 1/60th with a 70mm focal length which can cause slight motion blur, and softer images!
This might all seem really technical so you should do some research on the Exposure Triangle and on how to get sharper images.

Bonus fact: The exif data for your pictures say your lens is a Tamron AF 70-300mm f/4.5-5.6, but its actually f/4-5.6. Weird!