First shoot portrait shoot, need C&C please.

[im2c0ol]

Hello fellas,

First time shooting portrait for my friend happen to visit New Orleans. I always want to be more professional enough to do some side portraits shooting to earn some $$$. Please feel free to C&C anyways to improves my skills. you're welcome to edit.

Thanks

1.

2.

 

[tirediron]

C&C per req:

1. Rather a lot of image that isn't an attractive young lady. GET CLOSER! Also watch your backgrounds; the rotunda might be a local sceneic feature, but in this shot, she appears to have columns growing out of her shoulders. Also, consider using fill light (in this case, LOTS of fill light) to balance ambient and introduce at least a little feature into the sky. The blank, white (blown?) sky is not terribly attractive.

2. Shoot at eye-level or down, not up (except in certain circumstances and this is not one of them). It looks like youd id ue some fill, but judging by the shadow, it should have been higher and closer in camera right.

Overall these are nice enough shots, but being professional is all about details. For instance, why not fix the fly-away hair going across her eye in #1; did you not go over the whole image at 100% to check for little things? Why is her dress two different colours; did you maybe forget to shoot a gray as the light changed? It sounds minor, but it all goes toward a polished, quality product. Even something as simple as that piece of litter or whatever it is on the tie by her foot in #2; the eye is naturally attracted to bright, so it's going to go right to that...

Just my $00.02 worth - your mileage may vary.

~John

 

[Granddad]

Here's my take on #2. I cropped closer, warmed up and brightened her skin a little, adjusted the hue/saturation of the background, hid the litter near her foot, removed a temporary blemish (spot) on her cheek and took care of the small bulge at her armpit. Also a very slight redefinition of her waistline.