2nd Senior session! Took advice for this shoot.

Got different facial expressions, tried to make backgrounds not ditracting, ect. Any other advice would help also! C&C welcome!

IMAGE LINK: http://www.flickr.com …jackschroeder/8​045509892/

IMAGE LINK: http://www.flickr.com …jackschroeder/8​045455345/

IMAGE LINK: http://www.flickr.com …jackschroeder/8​045595969/

IMAGE LINK: http://www.flickr.com …jackschroeder/8​045698324/

IMAGE LINK: http://www.flickr.com …jackschroeder/8​045638011/

IMAGE LINK: http://www.flickr.com …jackschroeder/8​045547094/

#1 seems a bit underexposed.
#2 I'm not a fan of the head/hair getting lost in the background.
#3 I would crop tighter and eliminate the sky.
#4 I like but would clone out the skinny bright "probe" down low.
#5 and 6 I like.

Are you not a believer in skin touch-up? Unless they specifically requested no touch-up I would clean him up.

I opened these up to view them at 2048 px

1, I don't mind it being under exposed, it's just noisy and a bit oof. the focus lands about a foot in front of his face, this is why his shoes are in focus, but not his face.
2, cool lighting, dof is a bit too shallow. his mouth is oof, his front eye is barely in focus, I'd say stop down a bit so everything is sharp, you don't have a background that you're trying to separate him from, so why such a shallow dof?
3, the crop is weird, you cut off just the ends of his hands and left a bit too much head room for my liking. I'm not sure if you're intentionally trying to make this photo look like film, but there's dust/hair going on in the photo..? I'm not even sure, if that's what you're going for, I won't give you any creative direction, but I think it could have been executed differently.
4, slightly oof. if you look at the wall he's leaning against, you can see that everything is sharp about a foot in front of him. his eyes/face are not in focus. only off by a little though. samething with the composition, you cut him right at the elbows which is awkward to me
5, pretty sharp, I like the composition. there's plenty you could have changed while shooting that photo to make it better, but for what you have, it's pretty good.
6, my favorite of the set. it's the sharpest photo of all of them, the composition is good. I'm not a huge fan of the typical rail road picture, but it's alright here.

I'd agree with mtn4mike. retouch his skin a tad bit. shooting portraits at 1600 iso isn't preferred, but sometimes necessary when you don't have enough light.. I would try to limit how far you push your iso next time, even with your 5d2.

great job on these, keep shooting!

1,4 and 5 look good to me. I really like 5. My only comment is that his eyes are very dark in all of the images. I really struggle with this as well when shooting natural light. Its so hard to get light in there. Perhaps a reflector or just a smidge of fill from flash? Really though, Im sure he and his friends and family will love them. Its a nice variety.

Mtn4Mike wrote in post #15159447
#1 seems a bit underexposed.
#2 I'm not a fan of the head/hair getting lost in the background.
#3 I would crop tighter and eliminate the sky.
#4 I like but would clone out the skinny bright "probe" down low.
#5 and 6 I like.

Are you not a believer in skin touch-up? Unless they specifically requested no touch-up I would clean him up.

Yes, these are allll going to be redone and the skin will for sure be cleaned! I'm not a fan of #2 either but he was at my house while choosing the favorites and he really liked it a lot. #4 I realized I should have done that after uploading and I'll be sure to fix it now!

skwirnmn wrote in post #15159769
I opened these up to view them at 2048 px

1, I don't mind it being under exposed, it's just noisy and a bit oof. the focus lands about a foot in front of his face, this is why his shoes are in focus, but not his face.
2, cool lighting, dof is a bit too shallow. his mouth is oof, his front eye is barely in focus, I'd say stop down a bit so everything is sharp, you don't have a background that you're trying to separate him from, so why such a shallow dof?
3, the crop is weird, you cut off just the ends of his hands and left a bit too much head room for my liking. I'm not sure if you're intentionally trying to make this photo look like film, but there's dust/hair going on in the photo..? I'm not even sure, if that's what you're going for, I won't give you any creative direction, but I think it could have been executed differently.
4, slightly oof. if you look at the wall he's leaning against, you can see that everything is sharp about a foot in front of him. his eyes/face are not in focus. only off by a little though. samething with the composition, you cut him right at the elbows which is awkward to me
5, pretty sharp, I like the composition. there's plenty you could have changed while shooting that photo to make it better, but for what you have, it's pretty good.
6, my favorite of the set. it's the sharpest photo of all of them, the composition is good. I'm not a huge fan of the typical rail road picture, but it's alright here.

I'd agree with mtn4mike. retouch his skin a tad bit. shooting portraits at 1600 iso isn't preferred, but sometimes necessary when you don't have enough light.. I would try to limit how far you push your iso next time, even with your 5d2.

great job on these, keep shooting!

I'm pretty sure the 70-200 that I just got is not properly calibrated, its becoming a common problem of the focus coming up about a foot off short of the subject. And for #2 I didnt even mean to take the photo I was just correcting some settings and he said he liked the photo a lot despite my opinion of it so I posted it anyways. I was just trying something different with the film look for #3, gotta switch it up a little bit sometimes For #4, again, the lens calibration . I was completely against shooting railroad photos but his mom requested it. As for the ISO 1600, outside the sky was dark and gloomy and in order to fix this and get better lighting I had to boost the ISO a little.

JakAHearts wrote in post #15160724
1,4 and 5 look good to me. I really like 5. My only comment is that his eyes are very dark in all of the images. I really struggle with this as well when shooting natural light. Its so hard to get light in there. Perhaps a reflector or just a smidge of fill from flash? Really though, Im sure he and his friends and family will love them. Its a nice variety.

I have senior sessions almost every day for the next few weeks and am borrowing some reflectors from my highschool so I'll be sure to fix that problem

Thanks for the help guys!

Cool! I look forward to your work.

this is completely a stylistic choice, but if you're AF is not working properly and you need to shoot something, live view is a way to nail focus every single time. something to try out maybe..

skwirnmn wrote in post #15163581
this is completely a stylistic choice, but if you're AF is not working properly and you need to shoot something, live view is a way to nail focus every single time. something to try out maybe..

The only thing I hate about live view with the 70-200 is keeping the 200mm focal length steady while viewing at 5x or 10x magnifications.

haha, monopod! :P