Hardcore critique? ok... well, just remember you did ask for it.
1. Not bad... rather dark, some sort of hairlight would have been nice as his hair does blend into the background. his left arm looks really soft. Also, I find the fall off of light from left to right to be rather distracting, but that may just be me. In addition there is a noticeable orange/red warm tint. On the bright side, the eyes look to be relatively sharp which is always important.
2. Decent shot, relatively sharp. Seems to be a serious problem with white balance as his arms are really red and his face is quite yellow. Also, straight on shots don't usually look incredibly flattering. For a guy though this works somewhat. He does look quite uncomfortable. Hard to control, but something to watch for and try to work with.
3. In my opinion this is probably the best shot of the set. Looks the sharpest, catchlights in the eyes. Still has the reddish tint though (unless he just has a really bad sunburn). also, what aperture did you use? On this photo I think it's a little sharp because the necklace thing he is wearing being rather blurry is distracting to me.
4. This one is a little rough. I think it's quite soft, not sure if you did this in post or not. My guess is you did in order to soften things up. The problem is that the parts of him that I want to be in focus (I.E. the eyes ears etc.) are not in focus. Instead the only things that I can find in focus are the tree, his fingers and his shorts. Because the tree and his fingers are in different planes I'm guessing you did this in post, and I would definitely reprocess it. Also, the tree in the background has a line around it, there it looks like you were masking around it or trying to select around it to brighten up the grass or something. In any event that is quite distracting (the brightness of the grass is also distracting in my opinion).
The last thing for this photo, and it goes for most of the rest of the photos, is that you don't really want to smooth and fix the faces of guys very much in photos. The reason being is that this causes them to look a little more girly. In my opinion you want to go with more sharpness on the guy, making him look a little more masculine to go with those huge shoulders he has.
5. On the positive side, this is relatively creative though ultimately slightly feminine posing. When my wife first looked at the photo, and I tend to agree, her first reaction was that the framing of it through the leaves (in portraiture) is something that should only be done in photos of women or engagements. It looks a little red, a little soft on him (the softness almost looks like a glow which is not really desirable for a guy usually), and there's that nagging line around the tree.
6. looks like an almost identical pose to #5, I'm a little confused about this photo as his left arm has almost no detail because of how orange it is, and his right arm still looks extremely red but shows his freckles. His eyes also look really odd, kind of dark and shadowy which is different from all of the other photos. There is still the line around the tree. The other adjustments I would make would be to tone down the greens a bit, and also to perhaps clone out the house in the background.
7. probably one of the best shots out of the set. The background is clear and sharp. He is relatively shap, the pose is more masculine. still looks yellowish/orangish but is much more bearable in this photo. You might consider cloning out the quarter or whatever it is on the bottom right that is really bright.
8. Hmm, this photo is extremely bright. I do like the background and if you change the colors around a bit it may be helpful. I went ahead and messed with the colors etc. a bit because of the "my photos are ok to edit" I'll post it at the bottom of this post. He seems to be tinted green as well.
9. I think this one would be really nice if you fix the coloring. He's quite red. If you make him more normal in color the photo should turn out nicely. I like the background, it's pretty nice. One thing is that you almost never want to have anybody put their hands entirely into their pockets. Maybe cupping a thumb in, but not much more than that.
10. Pretty nice shot. The coloring of the grass is much more pleasant here. He still looks quite red though. Also, for the posing, the legs like this is a common feminine pose.
Again, I wanted to say that I hope you don't take my critiques too hard. I tried to share my opinion honestly and not to sugar coat it too much. Take it as you would like. these are my .02 your mileage may vary.
oh, I just noticed, my edit still has him looking a little green around the chin, I could probably fix it if I tried, but this was done in five minutes so... too bad.
![[No title]](/data/xfmg/thumbnail/42/42349-fa3065c4e047f0114ec8715d9168dff9.jpg?1734176875)
