1st attempts at Portrait

[desmo13]

Rebel XTi, stock kit lens.

Anything special, good and bad?

[JTcooper]

I thinks you had capture the most importance mood in the child face. nice shots, hope you can rotate #2 horizontaly cause my neck is hurt by looking at that one...

happy shooting JT

[Alison]

The first one is a little too grey. Try an auto contrast in photoshop (if you have it) for that one.
Also, there are no catchlights in her eyes. Could've used a reflector or using flash.
If you have cut her hands off in-camera, crop it to a head and shoulder shot, but try to keep the rule of thirds with her eyes preferably on the top third.

The second one, great colours and exposure. Nice catchlights in the eyes.
It's a little too centred for me though.

The third one, again, great colours and exposure. Shame you cut his paws off

All in all though, you've made a great start. And posting in here is one of the best things you could ever have done. Happy shooting! :thumbsup:

[desmo13]

here is my try at your edits (p.s., by your blog, and the threads, I ordered one of those canon 50mm 1.8





I like the second better. For the dog, used a different pic, one with his paws in it

[GB1]

I find the first shot overcome by technical problems. The background is busy and the image itself has way too little contrast. The second shot is much better. I like the way she is leaning sideways -- actually gets me dizzy -- though the background is still somewhat busy, but definitely not as bad as the first attempt. The dog shot is very good except for the tree behind him. He looks noble!

Not a bad first attempt at all, IMO. I like the second posting of the dog too.

GB

[Alison]

You ordered a 50mm yay! Y'know I should get commission for getting people to buy those lol.
Would you mind if I took your pics and re-posted them to show you what I mean? A visual example of what I am trying to say might be better.

[Mr Yuck]

You ordered a 50mm yay! Y'know I should get commission for getting people to buy those lol.
Would you mind if I took your pics and re-posted them to show you what I mean? A visual example of what I am trying to say might be better.

That you should....you got me too.


The dog shot is good, excellent pose, good perspective, but the dark tree behind is distracting, but if that dog is anything like any of the dogs I've tried to take pictures of, you should take what you can get.

[Alison]

Feel free to edit my photos

I just noticed this at the bottom of your photo's

What I am trying to say is that it doesn't really matter if you cut paws off or hands off but if you do you should crop above the elbow.

Here are some examples of the "rule of thirds" crops. I couldn't do much with the dog and B&W shot because there isn't much room at the top of the image to play with.
You might want to remember that for future shots, back up a little bit because you can always correct your crops in post processing.

Auto contrast didn't help the B&W shot so I applied some curves. I've attached an example of how to do that.
I then applied some extra contrast of about 5 or 10.
I actually noticed, while I was processing, she did in fact, have some catchlights in her eyes after all. :thumbsup:

I hope you can understand what exactly is going on with the examples I have posted.

[desmo13]

Wow, thank you. I understand now. In the future, I will back up a bit, since I can always crop much harder to add.

[Alison]

Wow, thank you. I understand now. In the future, I will back up a bit, since I can always crop much harder to add.

Brilliant! I look forward to seeing some more portraits from you :thumbsup:

[mdmc]

desmo, you're off to a great start! I'd like to add that you need to watch the background as well. Trees directly behind ruin things. I like the first shot of the dog cropped just under the collar. It looks like you used flash for the dog. It would have helped the shots of the girl as well.
Here's my fix for the 2nd shot. Crop the bottom and blurr the background.
Happy shooting,
Mark.

[mdmc]

pic didn't upload. shuold be here. OK, had to down size it.

BTW this blur..... raidial blur.....zoom.
Mark.