High School Graduation

[JimCapaldi]

My daughter graduated high school yesterday! Any suggestions to improve this photo? TIA

[thebishopp]

Take a different one? LOL no sorry not trying to be mean but she looks like she is faking the smile... almost a slight grimace like "oh no not another picture, come on".

Have her push the glasses up on the bridge of her nose a bit so you can get a clearer shot of her eyes (then sharpen them up a bit in photoshop - the eyes not the glasses).

Do something or crack a joke to make her smile a bit more genuine or take a couple pics with different smiles (so you can pick which one looks better). Whiten up the teeth a bit (photoshop again) and perhaps do a light soften on the whole pic?

Oh yeah, just noticed the white of the gown is a little washed out... can barely make out the details of it. Might be just my laptop screen though because when I tilt the screen back I can see it better (of course when I do that the rest of the photo can't be seen).

[Kathy H]

This might be overdone, but I tried.:)

[simon_says]

Are you referring to this specific photo, or are you asking how to improve graduate portraits in general?

For this specific photo, there's not much you can do about the composition, which seems a bit bland. However, you can add some contrast to make it "pop" a bit more, and perhaps increase the saturation a little. If you shot the image in RAW, it should be easy to adjust those.

...

In general though, I think your photos can hugely benefit from better use of posing and creativity. No offense, but the composition of the above shot is a bit "boring" - it's just a straight-on shot that isn't very flattering. You should try different environments and poses that can add interest to the photo.

For example, here are a few university graduation pics I took for a friend. They are simple shots using ambient light, and/or a single Speedlite.
http://img242.imageshack.us/img242/8941/portraitsbo4.th.jpg (http://img242.imageshack.us/my.php?image=portraitsbo4.jpg)

[I26]

I tried to make it a little more youthful.

[JimCapaldi]

Thanks for all your comments. They were quite helpful to me and I will keep them in mind in the future.

[thebishopp]

Nice touch up work there I26!

[DocFrankenstein]

http://img242.imageshack.us/img242/8941/portraitsbo4.th.jpg (http://img242.imageshack.us/my.php?image=portraitsbo4.jpg)
Are you in UofT as well?