First portrait

[zakabog]

The second day of having my Powershot G3 I went to my friends house and took a few photographs, this is one of them and it seems to me like a good one but I was wondering what other people think. What could I have done to improve it? Composition? Lighting? It seems a little dark, also the position of my friends head seems a little ackward but he was playing a game and turned around when I took this picture I think it fits him nicely since he's always in that chair in front of his computer. Anyway please tell me what you think of it -

http://a.kobaz.net/~banshee/Picture%20063.jpg

And please look at my other pictures, any comments on any pictures would be greatly appreciated (keep in mind most of them are just snapshots that I put online to share with my friends, although I'd like to have professional looking photographs.) I hope to get my entire gallery back online soon but I gotta figure out how to get apache working on this computer again :-/

[RbnDave]

I am terrible at portraits so take my advice with a grain of salt.

First, the background is too distracting. I found myself looking at the computer instead of the subject. Try cropping out the right side of the photo.

Also, the colors seem a bit off. The subject's face looks too red and the background too yellow. My portraits turn out that way also. I have no idea how to fix it. Maybe it's the light source.

[bmac]

I agree with Dave...to many distractions. I find my portraits work best with minimal distractions, or set a longer exposure time to drown out the background....but even that may not work in this particular shot.

[zakabog]

Well the color is from the light source, he has very dim flourescent lighting, I should have used custom white balance, and I see what you mean by the computer being too distracting, now that you mentioned it I can't keep my eyes off it. Thanks for your input, I'll take it with a bit more than a grain of salt hehe.