First time try....C&C welcome

Ok, be gentle, but honest please. I'm looking for any feedback on the below shots. A friend of my wife asked to have some photo's taken of her son and these were a few of the winners.
I was a bit upset with myself, I underexposed every shot by about a half stop, recoverable but still irritating. I need to get better at checking the histogram as I'm shooting.

IMAGE LINK: http://www.flickr.com/​photos/cordesj/1271176​1573/

IMAGE LINK: http://www.flickr.com/​photos/cordesj/1271176​5083/

IMAGE LINK: http://www.flickr.com/​photos/cordesj/1271204​9974/

Nobody had any thoughts? I'm new to this space and would appreciate feedback, good or bad.

I've noticed that in the kids and family section, after one comment, more seem to accumilate rapidly, so i'll start you off!

If this was your first time photographing a baby I'd say you did extreemly well. Much, much better than my efforts with my daughter, who i had unlimited access to, not just one sessions, so well done. It's not an easy thing to get right. I hope I do better the next time around.

A couple of thigns that stand out to me;

On #1, the out of focus cow head in the foreground is a bit distracting.
On #2 I'd be tempted to crop the edges off - they're kinda dead space and you can see underneath whatever he's sitting on in the corners.

Thank you for your responses, and compliments. I got a number of decent shots in this 2 hour session, altho there were issues with things like #2. We did not have great prop setups for this.

#1 was a try with propping him up on a blanket covered pillow, I needed something firmer, this was the only shot from that that turned out well, he was intrigued by the cow and was a great shot of him, I know what you are talking about with the cow.

#2 the shots from this chair turned out the best, I had a hard time culling down images from it. The frame of the chair was a big problem in almost all of the shots, I will see if I can do a better crop on this, I agree and struggled thru that as well during processing.


This session was a number of firsts for me.
1. first actual portrait session of any kind
2. first time using my off camera flashes
a. 430ex2 in a Westcott Apollo orb using a pocketwizard flextt5
b. 420ex in an umbrella reflected using a ttl cable

I really wished I could have gotten more keepers from the setup we were working with in #1. I really liked that background with him.

That's a lot of firsts. Seriously, expecting more from yourself would be unreasonable. I'd been into photography as a serious hobby for 8 or 9 years before my daughter was born, and a monkey with a holga could have rivalled me on my baby picks of her. Stepping into a new genre is always starting from the beginning to some extent (that's my excuse and i'm sticking to it!). My wife is talking about having a second. I will need to find another baby to practice on while she's pregnant!!

Anyways, one thing parents can never get enough of though is good photos of their kids.

If they liked these I'm sure they'd let you back for a second shoot if it's something you enjoyed and what to work on.

I'd say preparation and planning is key here -- with #2 you could find a blanket to lay over that chair so it hangs down at the front etc. Easy in hind sight (or with experience). Hard to predict on your first go, or second go, or n'th go in my case...

RMH wrote in post #16719488
That's a lot of firsts. Seriously, expecting more from yourself would be unreasonable. I'd been into photography as a serious hobby for 8 or 9 years before my daughter was born, and a monkey with a holga could have rivalled me on my baby picks of her. Stepping into a new genre is always starting from the beginning to some extent (that's my excuse and i'm sticking to it!). My wife is talking about having a second. I will need to find another baby to practice on while she's pregnant!!

Anyways, one thing parents can never get enough of though is good photos of their kids.

If they liked these I'm sure they'd let you back for a second shoot if it's something you enjoyed and what to work on.

I'd say preparation and planning is key here -- with #2 you could find a blanket to lay over that chair so it hangs down at the front etc. Easy in hind sight (or with experience). Hard to predict on your first go, or second go, or n'th go in my case...

LOL I find myself getting things to take pictures of.....a new baby I don't think will be on that list

Yes, a blanket would have gone over very well for that chair. It's a learning process. I've been shooting for about 4 years now, just never been into portraiture. I recently decided it was time to try something new and am working on building a decent kit and learning what I can about how to do this better.

That chair was a big lesson learned. A blanket would have done wonders for the composition of those shots.

Doing that shoot was more fun than I expected as well.