outdoor portrait/maternity

I would really like to get some feedback on these photos I took of my sister. I didn't have much space to move around (she just wanted to get photos taken on my mom's garden and nowhere else) so I didn't get any full body pictures. Sorry if the background is a little messy, I tried to pick the least distracting areas.

Any C&C is welcome... My main concern with these photos is the editing on her skin, I just did a little burn and dodge because I didn't want it to be too harsh, but I'm worried it might be too flat? or does the skin look "fake"?

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I think you did quite well. I prefer the coloured shots over the last one due to the expression/pose. Some are a bit over exposed but only across top of her chest.
...and yes, would be better to keep branches from the front.

do you think her chest is over-exposed in all of them or mainly the last ones? She had a bit of sun burn on the center so I used the dodge tool to try to make it brighter like the shoulders, but I see now that it does not match the light on the skin

Well - the middle ones
I would not use dodge for sunburn problems. Try Hue, saturation and levels (for exposure) on a mask.
I agree with your fear that she is also on the verge of being too soft...unnatural. Skin has texture....it is reality.

Don't really get the maternity feel from these. Not enough of the baby belly in my opinion. It looks like you added some softness to them? I'm not sure it works to be honest. Exposure is a little on the bright side IMO too.

This is the original for one of them, she had foundation on so there wasn't much to correct. But some eyeshadow fallout under her eye so we rubbed it off with tissue paper, which also rubbed off the concealer for her dark circles and she asked me to edit them out in post, or at least how they would look if she still had concealer on them.

I used the clone tool for under her eyes, did a dodge and burn masks and gaussian blurred the highlights and shadows for a softer effect. I did a gaussian blur on the facial skin a bit but turned the opacity down to about 20% I think.

In light room I just did some basics with color and contrast, and did a gradient turning down the clarity a bit coming from the left side of the picture to the middle.

If you zoom in on the edited pictures to her skin there is skin texture, just when zoomed out it looks flawless I think..

Is that too much editing on her face?

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Did you shoot this in Raw or JPEG? All of these images appear about one stop overexposed and low contrast; her skin is almost white (235, 235, 225) in some places. Also the DOF could have been greater.

PixelMagic wrote in post #16231426
Did you shoot this in Raw or JPEG? All of these images appear about one stop overexposed and low contrast; her skin is almost white (235, 235, 225) in some places. Also the DOF could have been greater.

In RAW. I though letting her skin be over exposed a little could add to the maternity feel like a "glow" or something but maybe I'm wrong. What spots do you mean by white? On her chest she has "tan lines" or whatever they're called that I'm not sure how to correct, either whitening the rest of the skin to match it or making the rest of the skin darker? On her face I did some dodge and burn masks to add highlights and shadows, was that maybe too much? Thanks for your input, greatly appreciated

If you run the Color Sampler tool across her skin you will see it register near white in many places. In some instances the Red channel reads 245 ( and Green and Blue channels only slightly lower) which is only 10 levels from pure white.

There are lots of ways to fix tan lines; in Photoshop you can sample the color of the "good" skin and paint it over the lines for example. If you post one of the raws like IMG you'll probably get tons of advice.

Naraly - I brought your newer posted image into PS and now see your dilemma. You have exposure issues but in correcting this, you do highlight the skin colour difference on her chest, her tan lines and the darker tan above her clavicle. This was not an easy image
I tried to match the chest area to her arms and then lighten her face and neck. I used a number of tools including photo filter and dodge and burn (as you suggested). I am not too satisfied with the chest area in the edit but you can see how it is possible to even out the tones without making the whole image too bright (whiter) to compensate.

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Spike44 wrote in post #16231831
Naraly - I brought your newer posted image into PS and now see your dilemma. You have exposure issues but in correcting this, you do highlight the skin colour difference on her chest, her tan lines and the darker tan above her clavicle. This was not an easy image
I tried to match the chest area to her arms and then lighten her face and neck. I used a number of tools including photo filter and dodge and burn (as you suggested). I am not too satisfied with the chest area in the edit but you can see how it is possible to even out the tones without making the whole image too bright (whiter) to compensate.

Wow the chest area looks really good actually. It's very close to her natural skin color actually. Not sure about the face, it seems a little too dark on my monitor, or maybe just a little odd color. Maybe it's just my screen.

PixelMagic wrote in post #16231558
If you post one of the raws like IMG you'll probably get tons of advice.

I'm not sure what you mean by this; like posting the RAW file? How can I do this?

Naraly wrote in post #16236561
I'm not sure what you mean by this; like posting the RAW file? How can I do this?

Sorry; I lost my train of thought and typed out an incomplete image number. I meant IMG-6751. You cannot post a raw file directly to this forum but you can upload it to an image hosting site then post a link to the file here. Two of the more popular file hosting sites are Dropbox and Hightail (formerly YouSendIt).