1st Attempt at a portrait of my daughter.

I normally do not take pictures of people, but I am trying to get better at it. Both pictures below were taken with available light and no flash. The 1st pic was taken in a dimly lit room with only light coming from my sliding glass door behind me. The 2nd pic was next to my front window. I know I need practice, but I would like to get some tips on things on things I could be doing better. All that I ask is that if you have a negative comment could you also please offer something constructive with it. Thanks.

IMAGE LINK: http://www.flickr.com …59249585@N05/11​537734006/

IMAGE LINK: http://www.flickr.com …59249585@N05/11​537656035/

my recommendation is to shoot 100 or more frames and then come back for critique if you feel there is something missing from your images. for numero uno take your hand and hold it up over the left side of the image. use your hand to crop the image. notice the effect if you crop off the left side of the image into her hair. for me much stronger. the light is excellent in numero uno. numero two has a yellow color cast and blown out background all of which make for a poor image of a lovely creature. you can still recover this image with a little post processing. give it a try and let's see what you come up with.

^ What Jetcode said, with this added: lighting below the subject in #1 can lead to a Chiller Theatre look. That's not so much the case here, but be careful. In #2, it looks like you took a close up with a wide angle. To my eye, her face is distorted in a non-complimentary way. It looks like her chin was closer to the camera, resulting in perspective distortion making it look bigger. In both of the shots it looks like the camera decided that the nearer parts of the hair were more important for focus instead of her eyes. Never trust your camera to make the right decision.

Thanks for the feedback I really appreciate it. I will keep practicing.

WB seems weird.

Maybe add cooling filtering.

First attempt? We should all be so fortunate!

Here's a version imagining warm late afternoon light through the slider.

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It's great that your daughter is kind enough to pose for you! I know first hand how difficult it can be sometimes to get a kid to smile naturally. I like the first, and I like AZGeorge's edit on it.

Thanks for the feedback.

AZGeorge - I like your edit of the pic. What software did you use? I only have LR4, which I think I can use to get similar results.

Naraly - fortunately my daughter loves to have her picture taken. The hard part is getting her stay still for a few seconds.

I like the exposure and white balance of the first one. It appears very close to how I imagine it would have looked in reality. I also like the smile in that shot. It looks more genuine and not forced. Finally, I like jetcode's idea of cropping away some of the margin on the left. But I'd leave the right side as-is, she needs a little breathing room on one side.

She is a pretty model.
Here is my try in LR.

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When I first looked at your pictures I thought they were OK. I looked at the others comments and the other edit and thought ok.

It wasn't until I took a shot at it that I realized you nailed the eyes in that first photo. I am no expert at pp by any means. But, I can't get over how good that picture looks.

I have a 5 year old granddaughter that is pretty as a speckled pup too. I thought...I'll go find one similar to the one you have of your daughter and pp it and end up with an equally good picture. After looking through my photos, I realized that I never nailed the eyes like you have.

I think you did good.

dcsmith40D wrote in post #16565655
When I first looked at your pictures I thought they were OK. I looked at the others comments and the other edit and thought ok.

It wasn't until I took a shot at it that I realized you nailed the eyes in that first photo. I am no expert at pp by any means. But, I can't get over how good that picture looks.

I have a 5 year old granddaughter that is pretty as a speckled pup too. I thought...I'll go find one similar to the one you have of your daughter and pp it and end up with an equally good picture. After looking through my photos, I realized that I never nailed the eyes like you have.

I think you did good.

Well said, we can offer PP advise but you did "nail it"

Love that last edit! Nice work.

Thank you all for the comments. When I get a chance I will take some more pics and post them.

I like pic one as well, and the eyes there are indeed nice and sharp