First attempt at portrait work.

I have done some portrait work in the past but this was my first serious practice attempt. All I had to work with was a home made reflector and the sun. The lens I used was the 100-400mm wide open at 5.6. Any and all helpful and constructive criticism would be greatly appreciated!

Photos continued.

Why the tree....dont have people hiding behind a tree.

I like the first two angles. the forth, is she scratching lice?

Like I said, this was my first attempt. Didn't know trees were bad. Thank you for the advice

The first two are definitely my favorite of the group. The third one isn't "bad" (in regards to the tree), but the kinda odd posing isn't necessary. The third one, although I didn't see it at first, yeah, it kinda looks like she is freaking out about having creepy-crawlies in her hair.

Now, the good stuff, the first one is (in my book) a shot to be rathe proud of. The lighting (which compliments her hair tremendously), the depth of field, background blur and perspective are all enjoyable (to me, the viewer). It almost looks like a very good album cover.

The second shot, basically everything I said about the first shot goes for this one aswell. One tiny thing though, it seems to be cropped slightly too high on her torso, but that might just be my particular taste (of the moment).

Nice job, keep shooting!

I really like the first one as well....beautiful hair. The tree.....pretty contrived, makes for a snapshot-ish quality.

The last one, I think I know what you were going for here. Her fingers should be more running through her hair rather than digging.

Pretty girl.

The 1st and last are my favs - but I would be careful of tight crops (the chin in #1).

I would reup these with MUCH less compression as I am seeing bad compression artifacts (plus focus could be better....sharpening may help).
Most serious error is that these could use a large dose of cooling filter (blue)...her skin is too warm/orange.
EX:

What are good compression settings? These do seem to have lost quite a bit of image quality.

MrJack787 wrote in post #15644068
What are good compression settings? These do seem to have lost quite a bit of image quality.

I use Photoshop for compression...
I would never use anything less than a JPG High preset for photos especially in these forums. If I recall, the "high" preset (in Photoshop) is 60% quality. Many years ago, large size meant a slow upload and download for viewing but nowadays, I doubt anyone has problems with a 200-300 kb file. Your last image by contrast was 59 kb.
Keep in mind that you upload it to some hosting servers, they may compress your images even more.

Here is one more that I forgot to upload if anyone is still looking at this post.

IMAGE LINK: http://www.flickr.com/​photos/bdawson88/85079​36498/

Beautiful model, good shots

Gidday Jack,

I would stop the lens down a little so both eyes are in focus, reframe slightly in the 2nd one (crop maybe?) so the background highlights aren't so distracting. And speaking of highlights, watch the blown out ones. I know it's not easy in natural light but you're getting there.

Regards.

The portraits are technically good, maybe a looser crop would be beneficial.

It's all about posing and background, keep practicing and figure out what you like. It will come with experience.

kaptnkain wrote in post #15650627
maybe a looser crop would be beneficial.

I agree. I also agree that most of them are too orange for my tastes, but that's a simple fix!