Did my first photo shoot and I'm not pleased

[rainking]

Did my first photo shoot. Not paid of course. I'm not pleased with the results. Not sure what I did wrong. Can you take a look and tell me what I did wrong? I know people don't like clicking links but I want to show all the pictures to get an idea what I'm doing wrong. "Thanks" will follow.

Jim and Jen - TedTucker's Photos

 

[Robin Usagani]

I'm on iPhone so I won't give you detailed cc. Pretty much your location blows and always the same. Need to go to a park or something.

 

[Jcampbelll]

Many are out of focus. Was it paid?

 

[eric-holmes]

wow, did you really edit 93 photos?

 

[Bitter Jeweler]

Turn your camera sideways, sometime.

 

[Bitter Jeweler]

Many are out of focus. Was it paid?

Top of page, second sentence.

 

[cardinals1970]

As said above many were out of focus with a distracting background. Also I feel you need to turn the camera and shoot more vertical. Another thing I noticed is the guy looked like he has a hard time smiling in alot of the shots he looks upset or constipated.

 

[shmne]

Diversity of poses, preparation of the couple involved, and a better location all could of helped the shoot out significantly.

The best advice is learn how to pose people a bit more naturally, or at least learn how to get them interacting with each other in a pleasing way. Also try to convey to them precisely what you want them wearing, especially if they are not paying you to do this the least they could do is wear something a bit more pleasing. It isn't bad, just all blue. Finally the location itself is quite drab, the editing you did on top of the photos makes them even darker and a bit more...uninteresting to say the least. Having lots of dark colors, on top of a darker end editing takes away from the little contrast that was available to begin with this photo.

The next time you have a chance like this I'd ask them ahead of time to clear their schedule so you can shoot for a solid hour. Get many positions in a couple of outfits, really focus on the couple looking natural together and not "Oh hey there's a dude with a camera, FAKE SMILE TIME!" Getting the real smiles from people will be the hardest, followed by getting them to look all comfy.

 

[rainking]

wow, did you really edit 93 photos?

LR3 lets you copy and paste your settings. I was able to do this a lot of the pictures.

I'm on iPhone so I won't give you detailed cc. Pretty much your location blows and always the same. Need to go to a park or something.

Thanks, I'll remember that.

Turn your camera sideways, sometime.

Yea, I forget to shot vertically a lot. Thanks.

Diversity of poses, preparation of the couple involved, and a better location all could of helped the shoot out significantly.

The best advice is learn how to pose people a bit more naturally, or at least learn how to get them interacting with each other in a pleasing way. Also try to convey to them precisely what you want them wearing, especially if they are not paying you to do this the least they could do is wear something a bit more pleasing. It isn't bad, just all blue. Finally the location itself is quite drab, the editing you did on top of the photos makes them even darker and a bit more...uninteresting to say the least. Having lots of dark colors, on top of a darker end editing takes away from the little contrast that was available to begin with this photo.

The next time you have a chance like this I'd ask them ahead of time to clear their schedule so you can shoot for a solid hour. Get many positions in a couple of outfits, really focus on the couple looking natural together and not "Oh hey there's a dude with a camera, FAKE SMILE TIME!" Getting the real smiles from people will be the hardest, followed by getting them to look all comfy.

Thanks. lots of good advice there.

A general question for you all: What more can I do to improve focus. I shot AF-S and S (single servo) since my subject wasn't moving and each time I pressed the shutter all the way down, the camera confirmed (little circle and confirmed beep) that it was in focus. Made sure my shutter speed (1/50th) was at least my focal length of 55mm. What more can I do after that to ensure that it is in focused. I shot all these in Manual mode btw.

 

[shmne]

When talking about focus, aperture plays a large part as well as shutter speed. In a daylight photo like this you probably could get away with f 2.6 / 1/200th shutter. This would allow a decent amount of depth of field to play with, while ensuring that the photo isn't picking up any accidental motion blur. Sometimes even the slightest motion blur can come off as OOF instead.

Assuming you're using spot metering, I really don't know why you would be getting soft focus. Now one problem may be this actually - while in LR are you applying an UnSharp Mask? If you are using the RAW file format, that means your camera does not apply any sharpening at all on the final image you see on your computer. An UnSharp mask actually sharpens the image in a way that the camera normally would, much better than any other of the sharpening options like "Sharpen; Sharpen More..."

This last step mentioned above is needed on every photo you take in RAW.

 

[Mugen80]

Its mostly all been said. Im not a fan of the vignetting on these pictures. Its just a matter of practice and working out the bugs.

 

[mrshaleyberg]

I'm not trying to be mean or anything (really, I'm not)..But the woman's clothing isn't flattering to her figure at all. It looks like she's got a bit of camel toe going on.

 

[manaheim]

^^^^^ +1 !

I was going to suggest that there is NO SHAME in suggesting different clothing. You may hit a point where there simply is no way to do it and the person in question is just TOTALLY unaware of how horrible they look in what they would most choose to wear, but... wow.

One way to phrase it is "Choose clothing that you often find others compliment you on". I'm guessing that these outfits don't fit that category, but...

 

[Derrel]

I'm not trying to be mean or anything (really, I'm not)..But the woman's clothing isn't flattering to her figure at all. It looks like she's got a bit of camel toe going on.

Yes. Elegantly understated. A skirt or dress could have really helped.

The poses too are also a bit less than optimal, given the height differences between the two, just having her standing there next to him creates a head height difference that is simply not good...their heads are far too far apart...she is way too low in the frame and or he is too high in the frame, and that creates a huge disparity in what is called "head height".

The static nature of the two of them just standing there is also well, just boring; if there was something that you could build a pose around it would be nice...anything....picnic table, fence, tree trunk or limb, playground equipment, a car, the bed or tailgate of a pickup, ANYTHING, to allow you to position her,and him, so that their heads could be brought into a more-equalized orientation, and that would instantly, visually "tie them together" better.

 

[PerfectlyFlawed]

Almost looks like you just continuously hit the shutter button ... several pics , frame after frame-- like nothing was planned. Just kind of got click happy and hoped for good results.


Im on a phone so the pics are to small for much cc