First attempt at a portrait

[tafletcher]

give it to me.

[emilbev]

I would move the couple away from the window. The bright light is very distracting. I would also move in a little closer, too much space above their heads and legs were cut off.

[12345Michael54321]

The woman's left hand is highly visible and rather distracting against the darkness of the piano and the man's dark shirt. It might have been better had the hand been posed out of sight, behind the man's back.

The expressions on their faces seem forced, in an "Okay, smile!" sort of way. Personally, I'd prefer something a little more natural.

The vertical line on the wall, that seems to run into the woman's shoulder, is less than ideal. Ditto the lines from the window panes, running through the man's head. A much narrower depth of field would minimize these problems, and I think overall improve the picture. Frankly, this would be my most forceful recommendation - try a larger aperture for reduced depth of field, so as to blur the distracting background.

A little fill light coming from the man's left might improve the appearance of the man's face (which isn't awful, though), his dark shirt, and perhaps keep the inside of the piano lid from going featureless black. So this could be worth considering. Maybe.

Cropping to a point between the man's knees and thighs might be nice. I admit, I prefer tighter cropping than you've used, and the man's pants' baggy knees add little to the portrait.

Despite these observations, I would point out that probably 99% of people don't really care about (and typically don't even notice) fine points of composition in looking at a portrait of loved ones. They just see people they care about, and immediately decide they're looking at a good picture, simply because they care about the subject matter. So I suspect your subjects' parents, children, etc., would be perfectly happy with this portrait, even if it is less than perfect from a technical standpoint.

[Kennymc]

What Michael has just said makes very good sense and is just about exactly what I would have done... Nothing a little Photoshop work can't improve, maybe someone will show you what Michael was refering to...

[johneric8]

It's fine but I would have never in a million years chosen to shoot a portrait with a window behind the subject unless you have studio lighting or an ellaborate flash setup.. In these cases, you need to expose for the window and use external lightning to help illuminate the subjects as naturally as possible. If you are going to take a pic with a bright window behind your subject you best have some nice lights!!

[12345Michael54321]

Oh, I wouldn't go quite that far, johneric8. Sure, putting the subject in front of a window on a bright day can make things a little trickier in terms of exposure or lighting, but it's not necessarily all that big a deal.

Click for image - http://www.time4email.com/CRW_2114.jpg

A friend of mine is an interior decorator, responsible for doing one of the rooms in the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra's Show House. She needed a portrait of herself for the show's program book, and wanted something casual and taken on-site at the house, preferably by the window in the 5 year old child's bedroom. So that's what I took.

I don't pretend that it's a masterpiece, but balancing the bright outdoor light (high, scattered clouds that day - it was about 1 stop down from Sunny f/16) with the dim interior light was easily enough done. I bounced the on-camera flash (420EX) off the white ceiling, and the results weren't half bad. At least, that's the portrait that she chose to use in the program. (I don't regard a hotshoe-mounted 420EX as being all that elaborate a lighting setup.)