My 1st lighting setup

[NMGolfHacker]

I received my lighting last week. I purchased 2 Vivitar 285HV, light stands, shoot through and reflective umbrellas as well as cactus triggers. I have been playing with them but not really tried to setup a shot yet. This is my 1st. I bought these to shoot maternity pictures of my wife and later of the baby. My wife is 17 weeks now. We play on taking a shot every week. No PP except for sharpening.

What can I do better? Your expertise is greatly appreciated.

P.s. Thanks Mike.

Exposure: 0.017 sec (1/60)
Aperture: f/5.6
Focal Length: 50 mm
ISO Speed: 100


http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3054/3079218582_e201bef0ae_b.jpg

[samoan_ridah]

I like the shot but here are a few things I would change/suggest. My eye is drawn to her left hand but it is too dark and it isn't in focus. Also, I think her right arm could be softened up a bit. My last suggestion would be to have her more to the left of this shot as opposed to being right in the center or take it in portrait and close up on her profile but get a little more of her body below her belly.

Keep up the good work and congrats on the baby!

[tenoverthenose]

A couple of ideas...
#1 You don't have to stick to 1/60 of a second. It might help to raise the shutter speed up in other circumstances to get overpower the ambient - but it looks like there is very little ambient here.

#2 When shooting a solid background that is evenly lit, in this case black, fill the frame with your subject. This lets you put more pixels/detail on what matters. Then, in photoshop simply recrop the photo and add in the black to frame as needed.

By the way, the photo looks good!