Take 3! Pre-recital portraits

Alright, this is the third time I was asked to take pictures at a recital and the second time I suggested getting a few posed pictures in before the recital and the inevitable bad lighting that goes along with it. Here are 4 pictures as a sample from the full set I took and I would like some C&C to see if/how I am improving from shoot to shoot. Of these 4, I think I selected ones with no background issues but in a couple, because of where we were in the building you can see things like a drum or outlets on the back wall or a wheel on the piano dolly but I couldn't do anything about them at that time. But if you have ideas of ways I can position myself, and the subject to help minimize that I would take them gladly! With no further delay, have at it!

Last 2.

I really like the composition in #3. She's a lovely model with a great smile. If you look very closely, you'll see that her right eye appears to be a bit smaller than her left eye. That's not unusual, and you can help counter that by posing her with her "smaller" eye closer to the camera.

In the first and last photos, I'd prefer a shot from a lower vantage point.

You mentioned that you had artifacts in the background, but those can be cloned out easily with some post-processing. I like the piano in the background for context. The piano also complements the warmth of the photos.

Thanks for sharing your work.

Disclaimer - Take this with a grain of salt as I don't shoot people.

These are an improvement from the previous shots. Keep it up. I really like the OOF piano in the background. You mention you couldn't do anything about the wheel but you can burn, clone, blur or a combination of the three to tone it down. The crop in the last shot is a bit tight for my taste.

Thanks folks. I haven't completed editing beyond sharpening the raw file and exposure contrast tweaks. These close up pictures beforehand I planned to do more detailed editing but haven't yet. If you like I can post them when I'm done and see how they compare.

You might check your white balance, as you obviously shot with ambient light. Take a grey card shot for reference and correct the white balance in PP (Hope you shoot RAW... ). This might improve the skin tones. Given the scene a "warm" look will be OK or even required but for me the colours are slightly off.
Agree with the shooting angle in #1 and #4 is a bit too high. Background should provide context but not interfere. This you picked well in #1 and #3. In #2 you got to guess but the background is certainly not interfering and in #4 there is not enough of the piano (and that swivel wheel is a bit ugly but can be cloned out easily)
Please provide EXIF info with your shots for commenting.

I tried to get rid of the wheel but I couldn't figure it out despite reading and watching more than a couple how-to videos. Also, according to my Aperture settings, the data is included upon exporting the filed to .jpg. Am I missing something? Thanks.

Agree on the white balance issue. There are other ways to deal with bad light - bring your own at least for the posed shots. And I would still shoot a white balance.

With the exception of the last one the posing looks good. The last one has too little head room and looks to be compressed. Perhaps a wide angle lens.

I'm not familiar with Aperture but you are missing something. There is no exif on the one I checked in LR.

Also, I don't remember which, and I will check, but I was using my flash as a supplement because the natural light was not being constant through the clouds. Ergo, wb was set for flash. What exactly is off about it that you guys are picking up on?

Besides not being consistent most of the images look too warm on my monitor (which is calibrated).

I turned the skin tone/warmth from .50 to .25 and am curious if this makes much of a difference to you all. Let me know what you think. Thanks!

Just changing that won't do the trick. You got to sample a white/grey spot in the scene to correct the white balance. Sometimes you might use the teeth or the white of an eye if you haven't got anything else (and then hope they haven't got too yellow teeth or jaundice ).

So, it's not an error with my editing, it's the photo itself. Though I don't see how it can't be changed in post since I shot in RAW and can change wb completely in post. Help me understand here.

What do you use to edit the raw?

Any raw converter/editor I've seen has the ability to change the WB. I use LR5 and it allows you to change the WB on raw of jpg (just less control on jpg).

Try using the WB eyedropper.

For White Balance, I would suggest the whites of her eyes or the thing holding her hair which appears to be white. I am also glad to see you go rid of the slight blemish on her left shoulder and the mole on her lip.
The WB can definitely be corrected, but as others have said, shooting a card under the specific lighting conditions would have given you almost perfect WB. But you can substitute with other white objects in the image.