First Attempt At Portraits

Here are some portraits I took of my wife and kids the other day.I know I should have done something different about the one of my daughter and her glasses. Other than that, any suggestions?

1.

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The ones of the wife look slightly underexposed, possibly. I'm still learning, so I don't have a ton of advice.

On the glasses, try having her tilt the ends (the part that rests on top of the ears) upward (so that they are maybe 1/4" or 1/2" off the tops of her ears. With her hair over her ears, you probably wouldn't be able to notice, and having just that much of an angle on the glass, keeps the refection of the flash from coming right back into the lens.

Were you using any kind of flash modifier? If you were in direct sunlight, generally, most people probably use unmodified flash, but it looks like you are in the shade, and perhaps you could get away with maybe a sto-fen, or some other type of modifier. Also, if there is any way you can get the flash mounted off-camera, that will help with the glare, or with the "flash" look.

The last one is my favorite. But, try not to cut off hands, unless doing just a head shot. If you do need/want to cut off hands/feet/waist, it's generally good to try and not do it at a joint location. So for feet, between the ankles/knees or knees waist (although this one can sometimes look weird), if it's at the hands, avoid cutting off right at the fingers, wrists or elbows.

geogecko wrote in post #12247176
The ones of the wife look slightly underexposed, possibly. I'm still learning, so I don't have a ton of advice.

I have some with a little more exposure, but to me the background exposure was too light or there was too much "flash look" depending on how I had it set up. These were the best all around in my opinion.

Thanks to both of you for your input.

Oh, and about the cropping... I seem to have this problem fairly often. I guess I get caught up in everything else and don't notice how I've cut things off until I'm at home looking at them on the computer. Thanks for the suggestions.

I'm the same person, just added more, LOL...sometimes I wish I was more than one person though...

I understand where you are coming from. Are you using a pop-up flash, or a big external flash? I've not had a lot of luck with pop-up flash, but using something like a 580EXII or 430EXII will certainly help things a lot. Gives you the extra power you need to balance the background with the subject.

Also, since you are using fill flash, try increasing the shutter speed. (By increasing shutter speed, you would be underexposing the background, so that you can match it better.) Your EXIF data isn't present in these, so I can't tell what you were shooting at, but maybe if you went up maybe 2/3rds or 1 stop in shutter, you could get that background a little less bright.

firemanjd wrote in post #12247275
Oh, and about the cropping... I seem to have this problem fairly often. I guess I get caught up in everything else and don't notice how I've cut things off until I'm at home looking at them on the computer. Thanks for the suggestions.

LOL, don't worry. I do the same thing. If you get in the habit of looking at all 4 corners of your picture before snapping the shutter, you'll start seeing it before you are at home. We tend to focus on the middle of the frame, because generally, that is where our focus is set to be.

I was using a 430ex. I don't like pop-up flashes for much of anything. Thanks for pointing that out about the shutter speed changing the background. I have a tendency to forget that the stuff not lit by the flash can be adjusted that way without negatively affecting the exposure of the subject. I hope that makes sense.

What the heck? I did it again!

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