First portrait

[ericgtr]

A freind of mine let me shoot a few shots of her so I thought I would share this. I have a lot to learn about portrait shooting, this was my first attempt. It was an overcast day which seemed to help with things not being too dark or light. This is right from the camera until I learn to use photo tools a little better :)

http://www.ericsmedia.com/gallery/albums/userpics/10001/susan24.jpg

[ryno4youth]

Good job. I would suggest using a little fill flash to light up the fas a little and it will give her a little bit of caught light in her eyes. Keep it up.

[Andy_T]

I like the photo, but ...

... the first lesson to learn would be that you do not use the photos straight out of the camera :wink:

If you do not do postprocessing, you are giving up on 50% of the quality of the image.

So my suggestion is to spend an afternoon to look at the portraits posted here on the forum with paying special attention to what people normally do in post-processing.

Start with the simple things like applying USM, making the eyes the sharpest part of the image, then move on to levels, curves, using different layers etc...

When shooting, focus on the eyes always and check the histogram to avoid blowing out parts of the image (like the blond hair). If in doubt, use exposure bracketing (that's what 3 fps is for when shooting portraits :lol: )

Best regards,
Andy

[BottomBracket]

You're on the right track! Take lots of pictures, with different poses and compositions. Put her right at the center, off to the right, left. You'll surely end with several keepers. I would agree with Andy's suggestion on post processing, though I would put USM as the last step.

[ericgtr]

Thanks for the constructive feedback everyone. I have some vacation time coming up and plan on spending some time learning to work with Photoshop CS2.