Four photos from a friends family reunion. Input is welcomed.

[shefjr]

All of these photos were taken in AP mode (aperture priority) and an ISO of 100. I regret using the AP mode on some of the other images that I haven't put up due to a motion blur. :/
My reasoning for AP mode was so that I didn't lose focus on anyone's eyes when shooting the larger group of people (photo not shown). I have a difficult time focusing not sure why. I don't feel like it should be that difficult. FYI, I did not and do not charge for these or any of my photos. This was a favor for a friend.
Please let me know what I could have done at the time of the shoot or anything that I could do in PP. I haven't yet given the photos to her yet and if there is something that I could do to improve the images I would love to know what it is.
Thank you in advance for any constructive criticism. :thumbup: positioning, flash, location.

1. This photo i was happy to capture just because for me it felt like it was a one time chance photo. I feel that I still missed focus. What do you think?

Youngest grandchild by Shefjr, on Flickr

2. This is the friend I am/was doing the favor for. She is aware that I am not a pro and am learning. My thought on this photo is that maybe it could use a little more fill light. When I do that though it seems to blow out a little bit.

Aunt and Niece by Shefjr, on Flickr

3. This was the best one of the set of four or five where everyone but one person was looking at the camera and smiling. I did have to do some photoshop work on this photo. The little girl on the left side refused to smile all day. That prompted me to go home and learn tips, tricks, and techniques on how to have better luck getting children to smile.

Grandmother and Great grandchildren by Shefjr, on Flickr

4. With this photo, I would like to have had bokeh for the background. Also I wish the background wasn't so bright. I think that I could have used fill flash and did try to use it. I ran into a problem though with two people wearing glasses. What I tried to do was use my sb700 (with the diffuser) and set it off to the side on the ground <--(mistake) so there was no glare in their glasses. The problem though was that the flash cast harsh shadows. Would I have been better off using a shoot through umbrella? (Any help with this topic would be appreciated)

Grandmother and Grandchildren by Shefjr, on Flickr

 

[tirediron]

Critique per req:

1. Actually, I don't thnk you missed focus, I think this is motion blur. I can see nothing sharp, but the eyes are the most focused part, which I assume is where you intended to focus. I'm not sure what your decision to use aperture-priority had to do with not losing focus; in this case, I suspect that worked against you because the camera dropped the shutter-speed to a level below which you couldn't hand-hold it and you failed to notice.

2. Not bad; you've cropped the hands and child's posterior which isn't a good look. There's a slight yellow cast which should be easiliy fixed in the pixel room; exposure is decent, maybe a touch under, but nothing major.

3. Not bad; any time you have a group of this size, there's almost always going to be one person whose expression doesn't work. You've done a good job of arranging the subjects here, and again the exposure is decent, but a fill light or large refelector would not hae gone amiss as their eyes are a bit dark.

4. Good, but excessive DoF which has rendered the background sharply focused and rather distracting. Again, cropped bits of feet which is visually "annoying". Try and get people to avoid leaning in and perhaps crop a bit of the unused space off of each side.

Just my $00.02 worth - your mileage may vary.

~John

 

[fjrabon]

the way to avoid glass glare is to have your flash higher and have the people with glasses to tilt their chins down just a tiny bit. Usually if your flash is about 76" off the ground and they tilt their chin down very slightly, almost imperceptibly, then you are fine.

 

[shefjr]

Thank you both for the critique of these photos. I haven't been able to put a decent response to your critiques due to my work load and my cousins wedding in VA. In either case, this is my response to you both.

Critique per req:

1. Actually, I don't thnk you missed focus, I think this is motion blur. I can see nothing sharp, but the eyes are the most focused part, which I assume is where you intended to focus. I'm not sure what your decision to use aperture-priority had to do with not losing focus; in this case, I suspect that worked against you because the camera dropped the shutter-speed to a level below which you couldn't hand-hold it and you failed to notice.
I went back through my photos and my shutter speed for this photo was I think okay. (1/400) So from that I have to assume that more than likely it may have been a case where I may have composed the photo but, moved slightly before I actually took the photo.
My reasoning for using AP mode was simple (in my mind), this photo was one of those moments where it wasn't meant to be (I was just supposed to be doing group shots), it was something where I saw the moment and tried my best to capture it quickly.

2. Not bad; you've cropped the hands and child's posterior which isn't a good look. There's a slight yellow cast which should be easiliy fixed in the pixel room; exposure is decent, maybe a touch under, but nothing major.
I was unfortunately unable to move the field of view because I was using the nifty-fifty and I couldn't have moved to recompose the shot as there was no further room to back up any further. I had thought about changing the lens but, it was part of the above moment where I was trying to capture an impromptu moment.
As for a yellow cast, I have a question. I have gone and looked at the photos that I took that day and edited in photoshop. I have noticed that some of them have different colors (orange, too tan). Question is, How do you maintain consistent color tone in your images? I assume that the color tone in my images must have reflected the mood I was in or something.

3. Not bad; any time you have a group of this size, there's almost always going to be one person whose expression doesn't work. You've done a good job of arranging the subjects here, and again the exposure is decent, but a fill light or large refelector would not hae gone amiss as their eyes are a bit dark.
I did try to use some fill light (1-sb 700) but it was casting shadows that I thought detracted from the image. I also didn't think that one light would be enough to fill light the whole group. Funny thing about this photo, I actually removed the head of one of these people and put a different head on because of the expression on her face. If you look close enough it's easy to find.

4. Good, but excessive DoF which has rendered the background sharply focused and rather distracting. Again, cropped bits of feet which is visually "annoying". Try and get people to avoid leaning in and perhaps crop a bit of the unused space off of each side.
I couldn't agree more about the excessive DoF. I cranked up the aperture because I was afraid that I would miss focus of everyone. I read somewhere to bump up the aperture for large groups of people. I guess I went a little too far. I was considering using some computer generated bokeh for this image.
In this case I cropped out the feet in pp. I did that in an effort to eliminate the unused space on the sides (photo aspect ratio in elements 10). I'm not sure how I can crop out the unused space without cutting off heads or taking off more of grandma's feet. I wanted to use the photo aspect ratio so that if and when the printed these photos they would already be in the proper format for printing. Any additional thoughts or help on this topic would be greatly appreciated.
Question, when you talk about leaning do you mean the woman next to grandma? And is it a rule or opinion about people should not be leaning?

Just my $00.02 worth - your mileage may vary.

~John

the way to avoid glass glare is to have your flash higher and have the people with glasses to tilt their chins down just a tiny bit. Usually if your flash is about 76" off the ground and they tilt their chin down very slightly, almost imperceptibly, then you are fine.
I would have loved to bring my flash up off the ground. The problem here was I had no one to help and I didn't think to bring my flash stand. Lesson learned. However, admittedly I'll probably still make the mistake again.

Thank you both for your helpful C+C. Hopefully I can try and learn, scratch that, remember what you both have pointed out to me here. Honestly, I will probably make the mistakes again but, for me that's part of the journey of learning.