Portraits of a Friend

I am looking for feedback on a recent shoot I did with a friend.

1.

IMAGE LINK: http://500px.com/photo​/135775497/

ML Portrait 2

IMAGE LINK: http://500px.com/photo​/135775389/

ML Portrait 1

I'm not sure what you were going for and I'm far from qualified to judge these.

1 is nice enough but would have benefitted from removing the knickknacks on the mantel.
2 could have benefitted from a longer focal length on the lens to remove some of the dead space.
3 nice enough. Dramatic contrasts lighting if that's what you were going for.
4 again is a nice enough shot of him relaxing.

On my monitor, the eyes are OOF in 1 and 3.

They seem to be overly contrasty to my eye.

Bassat wrote in post #17857247
On my monitor, the eyes are OOF in 1 and 3.

4 seems OOF to me

3 is just not good. It may have worked if it was wider and you got some kind of story from the surroundings but its just not a flattering pose, angle, expression or crop.

#1 and #4 seem to be out of focus.
#2 and #3 seem like snapshots. Still, they are nice moments/poses, I am just talking about the actual image quality.

4 is my favorite. Just missed focus. I think it's on his right shoulder. In 1 and. 3 his head is cut by the background which is distracting.

1 Nice expression & lighting. Wish that horizontal line wasn't growing out of his head.
2 Interesting angle. Might crop in a little. Did you also shoot a vertical image?
3 OK shot, but look at the top of the shoulder on the right. See the halo? Isn't it way oversharpened?
4 Another interesting angle. I like it but wish he was sharper.
Keep it up!

1 - Nice expression, crop and lighting but it looks like you *just* missed focus here. The eyes are slightly softer compared to the nose/chin/mouth area.

2 - Too much negative space and your highlights are looking close to blown. Try to recover some detail there. Maybe experiment with a mono conversion?

3 - Not feeling it. Oversharpened in certain areas, overly soft in others. Too much contrast and not a terribly flattering pose.

4 - Would be much much stronger without the missed focus.

All in all I'd say you're off to a good start! Pay attention to your focal planes, especially shooting wide open. What focal lengths are you working with here?

Cheers!

Jeff

Thanks for all the feedback. 1 and 2 were my favorites. I included 3 because it seemed like that was my friend's favorite, though I wasn't very happy with it (for the reasons you guys noted).

1, 3, and 4 were taken with a manual focus 85mm lens. It's the first manual focus lens I've used and I am finding it to be a bit of a challenge. I also don't have much experience with shallow DOFs. Probably a bad combination, but I figure I can get there with some practice. Next time I'll put the camera on my tripod to see if that helps. I kept going back and forth trying to figure out whether I missed the focus in #1 or it was just soft. This lens is a bit softer than my other lenses, so I think I may have gone a bit overboard with sharpening to try to match what I'm used to. I think I may have to spend some time figuring out how to make the most out of its capabilities.

2 was taken with my 16-35 at 16. It's a crop of an image that was taken in portrait. Maybe I'll try a different crop in portrait to see if I like it more.

I guess I'll just have to go practice some more. Darn.

For #1 -- either have the background more in focus or significantly less so (or remove the knickknacks, as mentioned).