My good friend Jason

He wanted to take a few shots so I took the liberty of helping him out. Mind you I had no lighting, no flash, nothing at all to work with, and these came right out of the camera from my sigma 30 1.4.

1)

Some good shots here. Nice soft lighting.

#4 looks a bit overexposed though. #5-7 are overexposed as well, but not as much. I think your meter may have been fooled by the dark shirt and tried to render it more of a gray.

One thing that really distracts me, though is his ears. His left ear looks so much larger than his right one. #1,3,and 7 really make his right ear appear much smaller than his left. On #7, it is especially worse as that ear is in shadow and should be somewhat hidden, but instead I had my attention immediately drawn there.

Finally, having a male tilt their hear toward their high sholder often makes them appear feminine.

I really appreciate the criticism. This isn't really something I shoot, and it's the first time I've ever really shot someone before. His ear DOES look bigger, wow, nice find.

I like the first 3 better than those in the black shirt. I am seeing some hot spots on those.

in 1-3 the light in the upper part of the picture distracts me. perhaps a quick clone to solve that. I also happen to like the pose and expression in #5, but perhaps crop off just a bit of the empty space on the right side.

number 4 works best for me with the light on his face.