My Nephew

I never do portrait work, so I'm looking for any and all suggestions. Thanks!

Great expression. Cute kid. These overwhelm any technical flaws, which are minor. Make sure you don't lose this photo. It will gain in value over the years.

joedlh wrote in post #16909737
Great expression. Cute kid. These overwhelm any technical flaws, which are minor. Make sure you don't lose this photo. It will gain in value over the years.

Agreed. You can feel his emotion when looking at this image. Great pic!

joedlh wrote in post #16909737
Great expression. Cute kid. These overwhelm any technical flaws, which are minor. Make sure you don't lose this photo. It will gain in value over the years.

Getting this expression/pose out of 7 month old definitely can be more than half the battle, but feel free to share the technical flaws. I have some thoughts, but want to hear what you folks think. Thanks!

Yes, this one is a keeper.

A larger image would make suggestions easier and perhaps even more useful.

If you have the CR2 or other RAW you can probably mitigate the problems with facial lighting. If this is a crop, you might want to consider giving him a bit more space.

AZGeorge wrote in post #16911531
Yes, this one is a keeper.

A larger image would make suggestions easier and perhaps even more useful.

If you have the CR2 or other RAW you can probably mitigate the problems with facial lighting. If this is a crop, you might want to consider giving him a bit more space.

this is a crop, but unfortunately there is only more pixels to the top and to the left. i chose this crop, leaving him some space to 'look into.' thinking now that maybe i should crop in more. as for facial lighting, i don't really have an eye for what is best. here's a larger image (1280px):

I love it

That's one of the best child portraits I've seen in recent memory - outstanding. Sure there's a few things one could tweak in post - but they're minor - great shot man.

I could see this on the cover of the old Sear's Christmas catalogs from when I was growing up as a kid. Amazing capture and a definite keepsake image.

But even technically wise, great picture! This will be of great value when that cute boy is older

Hey thanks, folks!

What a great pic! What a face! Maybe you should start doing portraits. You mentioned the facial lighting and It may be a bit hot on the forehead and under the right eye. But easily fixed.

I have to say, I prefer the original. The "hot" spots make him glow, and it just screams Christmas. After pulling down the hot spots, it's flatter in appearance, and loses some magic for me.

The only thing that I don't love about the original picture is that his left foot is out of focus, which I find a tiny bit distracting. Not much can be done for that, though, and it's really minor.

Very cute! I like the crop.

A photographer could go a lot of years and not catch that kind of emotion in a shot. Well done.