Erin

First time doing studio shots with my new setup, everything went great C&C welcome as always.

IMAGE LINK: http://www.flickr.com …/garyhebding/13​097639215/

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first shot is a very unflattering pose
3rd is a little hot and the white bra could have been avoided
#5 is a little awkward with the head tilt
in the last the stretch marks on her hips in the last can easily be removed

I like #2 the best you should grab a victoria secrets catalog and work on posing a bit

Overall - very solid. The pose in #1 doesn't work. The tilt of her eyes is up to camera right and the tilt of her shoulders is down. The bra lines are also unflattering and distracting.

#2 is beautiful.

#3 the white bra needs to be removed.

I agree with Pixil about 5 and 6.

Scrolling down the images, and before I read the inputs above, No2 leaped out at me too as the best of the group.
Great potential with that lady, agree that alternative posing may be better effective.

3 and the last one stand out as the best poses to me. A little photoshopping in the last is likely due. Perhaps a little care on the showing bra in the third. Most have a lot going for them (good work with flash set-up, nice and sharp, etc.) but I think the comments about help with poses are valid.

Try http://www.digitalcame​raworld.com …ownloadable-posing-guide/ and http://digitalphotogra​phylive.com/photograph​y-poses-for-women/ might be places to start.

Since you specifically asked for C&C here (I was a little hesitant to give any more on bf.c):

I think #5 is the best pose - almost. It would have been a lot stronger with a very slight bend at the elbow. Compare the aesthetic appeal of her left/near arm in #5, to that in #6 or #4 - unlocking the elbow and pulling the upper arm very slightly away from the body will slim the appearance by such a considerable amount.

The very slight facial retouch, just to lift and smooth the darker and more textured areas of her skin, would give these a noticeable improvement. I'm no expert in portrait retouching, but my wife has dark circles under her eyes so I've had to have a crash course in lifting those dark areas and minimizing their appearance.

It's interesting to see how much the shape of her face changes between a smile and a neutral expression. It's almost not the same person.

Is that a home studio, white paper? Or a full studio with a cyc wall?

Appreciate the CC!

It's a home studio, 9' roll of seamless paper on an impact support w/B800 shot into a 46" umbrella. Pretty basic but it gets the job done for now.

Needs some skin retouching on a few of these... mainly for a little blotchiness in complexion, the stretch marks in one pic and the blemish on the forehead. I also agree that the first pose is the least flattering and the second is my favorite.

After further thought, I think part (but not all) of the issue with #1 is the perspective distortion. EXIF says 37mm - you're pretty close there - enough to get subtle, but slightly unflattering, perspective distortion. If you shoot from face height, the head and shoulders are bigger than the feet; if you kneel and shoot from waist height, the tummy gets the "big" end of the perspective distortion, since it's simply closer to the camera than the head or feet.

Interestingly, #5 is about the same (40mm) but the seated pose is still pretty flattering, and doesn't seem to exhibit the same distortion.

For me, posing direction has been one of the hardest parts of people photography - but with effort and practice, it's certainly a skill that can be improved.