I agree with the general consensus here...nice shots, but over-exposed. If these were shot in RAW (if not, they should have been), my advice would be to bring them into Adobe Camera RAW, take the exposure down a bit, play around with the "Recover Highlights" and I might even bump up "Shadows", "Clarity" and "Vibrance" a little. If they were only shot as jpegs, you can still try running them through ACR, however you'll be less likely to recover those blown out highlights. If you don't already understand this on the camera end, one very worth while trick to getting good exposure (even after the fact) is to learn and understand "Histograms".
(BTW, if your using Lightroom instead, while I have little/no experience with it, I suspect you could very likely do the exact same thing there as well.)
For example, if you go into Photoshop and look at the histogram for the last shot there, you'll see everything is peeking at the right side of the histogram...those are the "brights"....they're bunched up and peeking into the RED (indicating they're blown out). Conversely, you'll also see a gap on the left side, suggesting there's little/no shadow detail. While this isn't always possible and it's only a broad general rule of thumb, ideally the information in your histogram should be fairly equal from side to side with the majority of the peaks towards the middle. Please remember though, that this isn't an end all, be all rule...low key photography for example, will often have everything towards the left and respectively, high key will always lean towards the right. The significance of this is that if you use Camera RAW to edit your RAW files (or Lightroom I suspect), you'll see that histogram change as you adjust your Exposure, Shadows, use the Recovery tool, etc., etc.. Again, it's not an end all, be all rule, but you can usually use the histogram as a guide to help you better balance your exposures and as you learn more, you'll find that you can also use them concerning levels and curves (in Photoshop), etc., to put a bit more polish on your photos....it's WELL worth reading up on.
Since you have it marked as "OK to edit images", I took the liberty of doing a bit of work on that last image, doing exactly what I described above. In this case, because the image is a jpeg (screen cap actually...I wasn't able to download the file itself for some reason), I wasn't able to recover those blown out highlights around the mother's lower back. That said, just by bumping the exposure down, bringing the shadows up, bumping up the Clarity, Vibrance and Saturation...it's made a pretty significant difference. And it took me LONGER to re-upload the file than it did to make the adjustments...only took a minute or two for some quick tweaks. Again, watch your histograms as they can help guide you as you edit.
...and once you have a firm grasp on the concept of histograms, take a peek-see at the LCD on your camera. Chances are it displays histogram info too and you can use this much like to light meter to determine right away if you've over or under exposed the shot. In addition, while I can't speak to other companies, I believe both Nikon and Canon both have ways to display blown out highlight info when you review your images...it's worth digging thru your camera menus for.
Also another little tip...if you're not already aware of this, when your shooting with digital cameras there's an adage to be aware of;
always expose for the highlights! This is actually the exact opposite of how people used to shoot back in the days of film, where you had to expose for the shadows. In essence, think of the pixels in your digital camera much like a bucket...just as a bucket can only hold just so much water, your pixels can only record just so much information. Too much light (over-exposed) and the bucket over-flows and you end up with blown out highlights that, more often than not, can't be recovered....for the most part, once a digital image is over-exposed on a camera, the highlight information is usually lost. Again don't know if you're aware of that or not, but since I can't really tell whether the over-exposure with your images is due to post processing or how they were shot, I thought I'd mention it.
As far as the girl's skin tones...honestly...I wouldn't worry too much about it personally. Using various techniques in Photoshop, such as layers, dodging, burning, etc., you could even that out, however, the fact of the matter is that most people in general aren't all that "monochrome" (LOL)...just my own opinion, but I think better exposure (either via software or at the camera) would likely have served these images better than any sense of tweaking in that specific regard.
As someone else suggested, learning the software is of course, a task in itself, however as with learning the camera, it will come with time, patience, practice and persistence. Don't be afraid to make mistakes...we
ALL do...it's part of the learning process. And don't be afraid to experiment and explore...many a novice gets intimidated by the software and they end up missing out on a lot of cool stuff! If you are indeed using Photoshop, one very nice advantage is that there's a TON of information such a tutorials and such available on the internet...just Google "photoshop image editing tutorials" and you should find PLENTY to get you started.
These are, as always, just my own personal opinions...please use them as such and I hope they help!
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