First "Real" Shoot

I present three photos from my first real photo shoot. I have shot my son before and a mannequin head but this is the first time I had someone come in specifically to have their photo taken. Also the first time I was in charge of posing, she has no experience.

In all I took about 120 images and came up with 36 I will PP. I know 36 is really to many but I can use the practice!

Interested in people's thoughts on posing, lighting (especially is the hair light to much?) and post processing please.

1.

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The hair light looks good. I'd have moved the main light to camera right as then she would have been short lit, rather than broad lit. As for posing, look how much thinner her upper arm looks in shot 3 compared to 1. With larger subjects, try to keep their arms away from their torsos to slim them.

Tony',
Thanks. If I move the main would I still have her face the same as in these shots so she would be facing the main?

She could have turned her head to the right more, pointing towards your strobe and that would have short lit her. It makes your face /her face look slimmer. Maybe a bit brighter modeling light to get the pupils to constrict some so you can see the color in her eyes better. I like them though. Hind sight is usually 20/20 isn't it?

Yes hind sight is 20/20. Thanks for the suggestion. I noticed the wide pupils but did not think it through enough to figure out why. Makes perfect sense now.

The thing that I notice the most is hand position in the third shot. Right hand is not great, left hand is terrible!

Anybody Else? I am really looking for feedback here. If you were a paying client (she was not) would you be happy with the images? The two responses above gave me some things to watch for and work on. What else should I be aware of?

Thanks again!

The two things I was going to mention have been said, namely the pose in #1 makes her look wide, whereas in #3 you have slimmed her a lot. And the second thing was the broad light to the face. I am guilty of that, but know that short lighting as mentioned above would help.

Is the Background all natural? Looks to be some edges, particularly her hair on her right side, that look too "clean". I may be wrong, but I dunno. :/

Nice model, and if you can get her back to practise again,. that's be good.

Here's my input:

Things you did well-
*good seperation from the background
*good ratio on key/fill
*good light placement for catchlight and loop shadow

things to improve-
*broadlighting is mostly ok for guys. Almost never for girls unless you need to widen the face
*a sepeate kicker light on camera left would have given her a nice rim outline
*get the arms away from the body to keep the subject from looking wider
*with girls, twist turn and bend to flatter the figure
*I think it may be earrings, but her earlobes look stretched out holes like those kids do nowdays (yuck)

Bend the Light: There was a ridiculous amount of stray hairs so I edited them out in bulk, that is probably what you are seeing.

Brian: I will work on short lighting.

Can you give me a better idea on where exactly you would have placed the kicker?

Arms = 20/20 hindsight. So much to keep track of!

I was going a bit easy on the twist and bend. Probably a bit self- conscious on my part too. She was here alone with me and I still tend to think of her as 12 or 13 (she turns 18 this week), I was more than a bit surprised when she walked through the door.

Yes her ears are gauged and I agree with you 100%. I was just glad she was wearing plugs and not holes.