Fall Family Portrait Session

Hey guys. This is my first large family shoot. I did a few group shots and also some "divide and conquer" mini family shots. I have not done a ton of portraits, but trying to improve. Let me know what you think!

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Love the photos but they all look orange or red?

Diane

The color balance, contrast and saturation has left your subjects looking very reddish / purple which might be because your monitor isn't calibrated and / or you're working on a terrible monitor.

I can also see totally inappropriately wide apertures chosen for some of the shots (the one in which the girl is lifting the dude. Shooting wide open isn't a magic bullet suiting all situations.

In at least one or two your subjects look incredibly awkward / sickly and really needed guidance from you. Re-touching is needed for some of these.

As others have mentioned, pictures are very very heavy toward a red/orangish color. Not very pleasing imo

Ok thanks guys, will back off the reds. I think pushing the saturation brought out these colors more in their skin. Will do some adjustments on the people to lower the effect.

Christopher Steven b wrote in post #17250770
I can also see totally inappropriately wide apertures chosen for some of the shots (the one in which the girl is lifting the dude. Shooting wide open isn't a magic bullet suiting all situations.

Why do you think this is the wrong choice? I agree that shallow DOF isn't a cure all, but to me, their faces are both in focus and makes them pop more off the background.

This was an unplanned shot that happened between headshots, so the aperture was set at 2.0 and no time to change.

Because the remainder of his body is out of focus in a disturbing manner to many. Especially with his feet forward. Unlike some images in which that would fade into the background, here it is a very prominent part of the composition. There is a lot of good in the images!

I'm not a big fan of blurring out all the backgrounds, especially since it seems that you went to the trouble of finding an area that would produce nice backgrounds.
IMHO, a little variety in your backgrounds would allow your customers more choices and may increase your sales.

You need to be a little more careful where you crop your images or frame a little looser and then crop to final dimensions.
#1. You left a lot of head room. A tighter crop would have been a better option.
#2. You included the sole of his shoe, but cut off her foot.
#3. You cut off the man's hand.
#4. You cut off the man's foot.
#5. Normally, it's best not to crop below the knees. In this image you left a lot of head room, but cut off her feet.

For your first try at family photography, I think you did a very nice job. You seem to have put your subjects at ease and their poses and expressions reflect their comfort in working with you.
Except for the colors being off, I doubt that any of these families will notice the things we've suggested for improvement.

Thanks, taking the criticism to heart. The family/client loved them and spread them all over, but I can definitely see areas that need improvement now. I am going to create a specific skin brush in LR to desat, lower contrast and clarity to avoid my subjects looking yellow/orange in the future. Will probably go back and retouch these as well. Thanks for the suggestions on crops. Some of these are easy fixes, but I need to work on framing looser for sure.