First time with off camera flash

[hawkskins]

Took some photos of a friends kids for christmas. Have never tried to pose anyone before and this is a first with ocf. Suggestions/comments welcome and appreciated.

[robertn]

Very good lighting, might have been a tad bit softer but this works well.
Composition wise, maybe a bit too centered.

Also, it looks to me you compressed the hell out of it (artifacts around his right eye?) which is a shame really.

Good portrait!

[DarenM]

A hair more light on the left would be nice, a piece of white paper to reflect off might have done it

[skydiver_8]

Nice....the catch lights in the eyes are in the right place, the colour is very natural.....I agree a small amount of bounce from a reflector on his right side would have made it perfect. Well done.

[hawkskins]

Thanks for the comments. And about the compression...how does this happen and are there ways to prevent it? I received the prints today and I must say they look [B]much[B] better than this.

[stsva]

Thanks for the comments. And about the compression...how does this happen and are there ways to prevent it? I received the prints today and I must say they look [b]much[b] better than this.

It's probably an unavoidable result of posting a low-resolution/highly-compressed image as required by POTN's posting rules (max of 1024 pixels in longest dimension, 150KB). You can post higher-resolution images by linking http://photography-on-the.net/forum/showthread.php?t=157706.

It's also a good idea to post images that have an embedded sRGB profile instead of an Adobe RGB profile, as the latter may not display properly in many web browsers.

[stsva]

It's a sweet shot, but the lighting does seem a little unbalanced. Here's the image with a gradient layer added to balance the lighting (I deleted your frame as otherwise the gradient would have made that look weird).