Help! New to this...

[Eva D]

Hi my name is Eva and I am a beginner photographer taking classes at my local junior college only been serious about it for about 3 months now. I do not have a dslr yet, however, it should be here at the end of this week. I wanted to know if anyone has any advice and feedback for my pictures and what can I do to improve my portraits. I know that some have a cropping problem and some pictures have parts of the clothing or sky blown out. In this set I included pictures from when I started out to the most recent from a few days ago. Thank you so much for looking at my post!

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[subscuck]

#1 is cropped too tight as well as suffering from a lack of lighting. Fill flash or reflector would have thrown some light on her underexposed face.
#2 is OK. Not sure if her smile is forced or natural, and I'd have thrown the bg oof, but I know you're using a p&s. Again, some flash or a reflector would have gotten rid of the raccoon eyes. Cleavage makes any photo better, so well done there. :thumbup:
#3 this is the best of the lot IMHO. Some hot spots on her face and wrist, but overall it's nice.
#4 looks like a camera phone snap.

 

[Eva D]

Thank you for your input. I will take your advice into consideration and work on the cropping and the lighting problems.