Portraits in the back garden

[kirif1]

Ok so i did a little shoot for a little family hoping that if the pics were good enough, it would lead me to do some freelance work coming up to Christmas. So off i go with my Nikon D50, my flash gun and a white sheet. The house was really dark so i kicked them outside in the garden.

Any comments, advice or crit more than welcome...be brutal if you must

Thanks for looking

 

[RMThompson]

ugh. White sheets are so tacky...

The shots themselves aren't bad, but get these people outside, even a fence or green grass backs a better backdrop!

 

[iolair]

The flash is still attached to your camera?

You've got a 1.8 lens ... give your subjects a bigger distance from the backdrop and use small DOF by picking a wide aperture. That will throw any blemishes on the backdrop way out of focus.

 

[kirif1]

Thanks for commenting, the further back i went the more of the garden background was in the shot and less of the sheet. As much as a white sheet may be tacky, a terribly messy garden full of junk did nothing for a family shoot either.

I agree entirely however that my DOF was too small, was a tad worried that i'd blur the subjects not only the background.

The flash is still attached to your camera?

The flash is indeed still on my camera as it is a Nikon D50 and it doesn't sync

 

[FarrahJ]

As much as a white sheet may be tacky, a terribly messy garden full of junk did nothing for a family shoot either.

I doubt that...get far enough away with a wide enough aperture and it'll be OOF...or get head shots and very little of the backgound will be visible.

The least you could do when using a white sheet is iron it or PS out the wrinkles.

You also don't have great light in their eyes. They are kinda squinty...perhaps a reflector would help.

 

[SrBiscuit]

The flash is still attached to your camera?

The flash is indeed still on my camera as it is a Nikon D50 and it doesn't sync

what flash do you have? grab a sync cable for $20usd. i did, and it changed my photography :thumbup:
if its a nikon, it should sync up to 1/250 if im not mistaken.