Sammie Senior Pictures - What do you think?

First senior ever, shot some pictures prior to her "paid" session with someone who knows what they are doing. Please let me know how I can improve! Thanks for any comments received.

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I like #4 perhaps in a portriat crop. And #2 is nice as is 3

1 look's slightly cold and appear's to have a very slight green tinge but I'm not on a calibrated monitor.

Nice work.

*Edited* on second look I'm not seeing green tinge- But they do still look cool. I think my perception of the green came from her neck in #1

you did a great job of capturing her hair and eye colour.

They're as good as most of the paid shots I've seen. In #1 the hot spot on her right cheek is annoying, and in #5 her right arm is blown as well. The lighting is a little on the harsh side for my taste on all of them, but only a little. I'd be interested in comparing what the paid photographer comes up with to compare.

Thank you for your comments. I like 4 the best but it is at f2.0, so the DOF was narrow. Seems friends either love it or hate it, but there is just something about the eyes that draws it out. Does anyone have an post processing ideas that would help the color / overexposure?

Starbucker wrote in post #5955410
Thank you for your comments. I like 4 the best but it is at f2.0, so the DOF was narrow. Seems friends either love it or hate it, but there is just something about the eyes that draws it out. Does anyone have an post processing ideas that would help the color / overexposure?

Well, from the jpeg at least, some of the highlights are blown beyond recovery, but I thought I'd drag this quickly into lightroom 2 beta to see what I could do with it.

Added lots of recovery to try to bring back some skin detail, lowered the clarity in order to try and give a semi-soft focus look which I find to be mildly flattering, and also helps to play down some of the contrasty portions of the image (which are rarely good for portraits imho). Finally brought the black point up a shade and gave the vibrance a tiny push.

It's not spectacular - literally a 60 second quick fix, but I think I prefer it over the original in terms of how it flatters the subject.

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