portrait

[kfirg]

:mrgreen:

 

[tirediron]

Hmmm... cute kiddy snaps yes, but I'm not 100% sure that these qualify as portraits, since that generally implies some degree of posing, composition and pre-planning.

 

[Derrel]

Oh, she's an adorable little cutie pie! I like the middle, French-fry-eating shot. The lighting is good in these--you have a decent window light source behind you, so her beautiful brown eyes get light in them and the light creates good catchlights, and gives what I call "eye-sparkle". One thing when shooting horizontal candids like this is to watch the eye height within the frame; if the eyes are at, or below the mid-level line across the frame, the images often feel like the subject is "riding low in the frame". A good case in point is the middle frame, the French fry shot; one eye is higher than the other, and we have a diagonal line implied between the two eyes; the variation and the height of her eyes in the French fry eating photo makes it the most "lively" and engaging of the three frames.

the right-most shot, of her drinking, has her eyes low in the frame, clearly below the mid-level line across the frame, and she has plenty of top space above her head; that makes #3's composition the weakest and least appealing of the three shots.

I would clone out that round, whiteish "bokeh ball" in the background of #2 and #3, and would maybe re-crop #3 tighter, and crop off some of the left hand side. In #1, her eyes are right about the mid-level line, and it makes the image feel static. I wish you'd gone lower, to include the food on the high chair tray, and would thus have moved the eyes higher in the frame. One of the biggest enemies we have is the doggone 3:2 aspect ratio of most d-slr cameras; the frame when shooting horizontals is VERY tight, top-to-bottom. Shooting full-frame, final images in-camera is tricky on kid pics, since they are soooooo squiggly, and unpredictable.

 

[kfirg]

thank you derrel! here is some other shots..

 

[Designer]

In the spectrum of portraiture, there are formal portraits (very much planned and posed) and informal portraits (still planned but with more casual posing).

These are candids. Candid photography is photographs of people who have little or no awareness of the camera, and who are not posing specifically for the camera.