well what do yall think?

I finally got a chance to try out my studio gear.

a couple younguno flashes I think I was at 1/16 for the most part
two shoot through white umbrellas at 6' pointing down 6' back with me in the middle.
my 7d with the 85mm 1.8

Ignore the crappy background. He wasn't in the smiley mood I was hoping for.

This is my first time shooting with the strobes and umbrellas.

Other than backdrop how can I make these better? Only post was auto tone, then I fine tunes the exposure, whites, shadow, and highlights. sharpened to 35, noise reduction to 30. I know I have forgotten something!

1

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whoops the last one was just with one strobe to the right, I wasnt planning on using that one

Like 3,5,6 & 7

I just need to figure out how to make them better now. I may try some more today. The more I look at them I need to increase the dof. This is the first time I have tried doing portraits like this

Thanks Rick!

Hi there!
I hate critiquing other peoples' photos with anything negative since I'm new and not good at photographing myself yet, but the first thing I noticed was the pink and purple boppy pillow with flowers the baby is sitting up with, mixed in with the gender-ambiguous plain white onesie- I assumed it was photos of a girl because of the boppy pillow being girly, but you said HE wasn't very smiley... so perhaps tighter crops on the ones where the boppy pillow is showing
Other than that- good photos.

haha my wife and I were talking about the bobby the other day being the girly one! This was the first time I had worked with the strobes in a studio situation. I did get #5 printed in a 8x10, one thing I learned is don't shoot them soo tight, I did not have enough to crop from original to an 8x10 and not be too tight. I don't mind the critique on these at all, I didn't have much for back ground and the girly boppy, I wanted to see how the shots would come out with the equipment and getting the shots looking good since I know NOTHING about portrait shooting. I have done tons of reading on it but am still handicapped at it. I am going to try again soon with some help from my wife, and get a time when he is in a smiley mood. I just got the "what are you doing" stare down the whole time. He was really good for the whole thing.