Portraiture

[AXENA]

First few attempts at portraiture. Ideas, suggestions?

[Airedale1]

Welcome to the forum. I like the composition of #2, but both images look over sharpened.

[Titus213]

Welcome to the madness...

I think you've got more light than you can control. Number one needs more DOF control to deal with a busy background. I like the composition of number 2 but I'm not sure about the focus.

[PhotosGuy]

Number one needs more DOF control to deal with a busy background. In other words, you want to use a smaller numbered f/stop, like f/2.8 or f/4.

[nater]

Noontime is generally considered the worst time to take pictures. The farther away from noon, the better.

You shot these around noon - am I right? They would be a little better at a different time of day. The light would be less harsh, and your friend wouldn't have to squint so much.

[LadyHawk]

Welcome to the forum. I like the composition of #2, but both images look over sharpened.

Yes, they look oversharpened, AXENA. Welcome to the forum! My first critiques were "Not enough sharpening!"... these guys are tough! ;)

[AXENA]

Thanks all for the replies..... in answer to some of the comments, yes, these shots were absolutely taken at around 12:30PM with a high-bright sun overhead.... not much I could do to change that! :-) I opened the camera up as much as possible to reduce the DOF, however, these were test shots with a G5, which as we all know has limited abilities (i.e. fixed lens).

As for the oversharpening..... my question would be this... how do I compensate for that? As far as I could tell, the exposure was correct, yet, "oversharpening" is a common concern. Switching over to a 20D tomorrow, so possibly there are comments that would help me reduce some of the oversharpening (both with a "point-and-shoot" as well as DSLR).

Thank you all for the constructive comments...... have been learning a lot from this forum.... y'all give some great advice! :-)
-Gary