Somewhere in Oregon - C&C welcome!!!

[MonicaRuth]

Please Let me know what you think!!! These are all just shot with my kit lens.

1 -


2 -


3 -

4 -

I'm kicking myself for her hands and feet being cut out of the picture..

 

[NikonO4K]

It might be me or my monitor but it looks like her eyes are out of focus in all of the shots.

 

[daveroberts]

I think 3 is good. Do you think it might look better if you cropped a bit of that sky off? I like 4 and then 2. TFS

 

[bryan_h]

Overall I think they are good images.
#1 appears sharp, but the rest seem a bit soft to me. Cant quite figure out where the focus was.
#2 and #3 could have used some fill flash, as your model looks a bit underexposed to me. #3 may have had pop-up flash??

 

[Granddad]

You asked what we thought, so ...
1: Quite a nice pose but notice how her right shoulder appears to be quite large and her upper arm comparatively skinny creating a leg of mutton effest? Not sure if that's the camera angle or the way her arm is posed against her top or a combination of both. Might look better as a portrait orientation crop, there's nothing about the bench that would make it a feature for the shot apart from as a background for your logo.
2: Underexposed for her, what settings were you using? If auto you need to be working in manual. The pose is *meh* awkward teenager family snapshot to me.
3: Ditto on the exposure. Pose is better but she still looks a little awkward, needs help from you on hand placement and facial expression.
4: Best of the lot. Landscape orientation works here as you have a beautiful setting. Could use some fill light. Clone out the tree growing from the left side of her head. Pity about the hands and feet but you'll pay attention to that next time, it's still a good shot.

General comments. IMHO your logo is too big and the positioning makes it too much of a feature of the shot. Try repositioning and maybe fading it to about 40%.
Lovely model, 1 and 4 show a smile and facial expression to die for. If I were you I'd aim to shoot her again many times, the more you work together the easier it will get.
Kit lenses are usually fine in the right circumstances.

I'll look forward to seeing more of your portraits, keep working at it, you'll get there!

 

[sashbar]

I agree with Granddad, No 4 is probably the best here. No 1 is OK, even though her right arm does not look really nice. Nos 2 and 3 have serious lighting problems as far as I am concerned. She is in shade whereas the background is sun lit. It give us impression of a photoshop planted subject. She simply does not belong to the surroundings. the reason is in both cases there is a bright clear sky and we do not see what causes the shade.

 

[MonicaRuth]

Thank you guys! Especially Granddad - I will definitely keep those in mind next time I shoot her - probably in about 2 weeks.
These were some of her senior photos and her mother was very pushy about a lot of the composition, and the time of day ect. Not that I can take blame off of me

 

[DiskoJoe]

I think 3 is good. Do you think it might look better if you cropped a bit of that sky off? I like 4 and then 2. TFS

She should have got all of the model in the shot and a lot less sky. That shot needed some fill too.

 

[Granddad]

I put #3 into LR3.4, painted in some exposure on her and the foreground and added a little saturation and clarity, then cropped a little tighter. What do you think? ...Bearing in mind that it's a 3 minute fix.