Pictures of a senior - advice and thoughts

[click8]

I recently photographed a high school senior, which is something I normally don't do. People usually aren't my subjects. Any thoughts or advice on these couple of edited pictures from the shoot?

 

[Granddad]

Welcome to the forum. If you don't usually shoot people this is a great place to learn how.
#1) You've got her shoulders square to the camera which isn't complimentary to the female form, close to a 45 degree angle is usually better.
You get away with the landscape orientation for a portrait because she's looking down into the corner.
I'm not liking the red splodges (I'm assuming they're added in post) - I find them distracting and can't see the point.
The hedge as a background is dark and busy, you'd have done better to move her farther away from it and used a shallower DoF to blur it if that was the best you could find.

#2) Fairly sharp eyes and nose but the mouth and chin look slightly OoF, I see you shot at ISO200, F5.6 and 1/60. You'd have been better to bump your ISO a couple of notches to allow a faster shutter speed. The very slight blur at 1/60th could be because she breathed or because of camera shake. I try never to shoot people below 1/125th at the VERY slowest if the light is poor. Modern cameras do good stuff at higher ISOs, don't be afraid to use it.
Again you've painted in red stuff. I'm trying to figure out why. If it's a new trend I (personally speaking) don't like it much.
Keep working at it, you might catch the people bug!

 

[click8]

Welcome to the forum. If you don't usually shoot people this is a great place to learn how.
#1) You've got her shoulders square to the camera which isn't complimentary to the female form, close to a 45 degree angle is usually better.
You get away with the landscape orientation for a portrait because she's looking down into the corner.
I'm not liking the red splodges (I'm assuming they're added in post) - I find them distracting and can't see the point.
The hedge as a background is dark and busy, you'd have done better to move her farther away from it and used a shallower DoF to blur it if that was the best you could find.

#2) Fairly sharp eyes and nose but the mouth and chin look slightly OoF, I see you shot at ISO200, F5.6 and 1/60. You'd have been better to bump your ISO a couple of notches to allow a faster shutter speed. The very slight blur at 1/60th could be because she breathed or because of camera shake. I try never to shoot people below 1/125th at the VERY slowest if the light is poor. Modern cameras do good stuff at higher ISOs, don't be afraid to use it.
Again you've painted in red stuff. I'm trying to figure out why. If it's a new trend I (personally speaking) don't like it much.
Keep working at it, you might catch the people bug!

Thanks for the advice! She was delayed by over an hour, so we were hardcore chasing daylight. How would you recommend brightening a dark background while maintaining correct exposure on a subject's face with limited lighting equipment? I'll also keep in mind not to shoot people under 1/125 and to bump up ISO to compensate.

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[Derrel]

I'm not a big fan of the horizontal framing in Shot # 1, but as part of a longer series of shot, it would be an okay image to include. Shot #2 seems VERY frame-filling...quite the close-up on her. As granddad mentioned, her chin and her eyes seem a little tiny bit out of focus, but not terribly so, and that effect would be minimized somewhat in a smaller-sized look at the image, or in a smaller print. I dunno...the second one seems a bit avante garde to me, let's call it that. She's framed a bit low within the frame. I pulled it onto the desktop and shrunk it and looked at it...it looks better as a smaller image than nit does displayed so large in this post...might look pretty good on a smartphone screen. I wish her chin were a bit higher within the overall frame area. If there's more of the capttue to crop with, I'd maybe re-crop this and put a bit more space under the chin, thus moving the eyes "up" within the total frame area. Not by a lot, but enough to pull the chin/mouth up within the frame.

 

[Granddad]

Thanks for the advice! She was delayed by over an hour, so we were hardcore chasing daylight. How would you recommend brightening a dark background while maintaining correct exposure on a subject's face with limited lighting equipment? I'll also keep in mind not to shoot people under 1/125 and to bump up ISO to compensate.

Sent from my LG-H740 using Tapatalk

Those situations are tough and all too common; was there a good reason for picking the background you did? Be flexible and have backup plans just in case. Natural light is great but it can't be relied on (at least not in my part of the world!). Consider investing in an off camera flash or two, if you're not a wealthy man Yongnuo do some excellent units at good prices... even if you ARE a wealthy man they're still excellent units!