First attempt at B&W Portraits - C&C welcome

Hello. I'm fairly new to CPOTN. I've been doing a lot of looking here, but not much posting. Hopefully, this will be the first of many postings.

A friend of mine wanted some B&W photos taken of her so that she could give them out as Christmas presents. She asked if I could do it on 12/23, and I obliged. Unfortunately, there wasn't a whole lot of time for post processing, so that I could get her something to print by 12/24, so they're not the greatest. I feel that I have a lot to learn in PP, so I would love to know how I can improve these and future shots. Don't worry about being harsh with the criticism...I need honest truth here.

1.

HTTP response: 404 | MIME changed to 'text/html' | Byte size: ZERO

HTTP response: 404 | MIME changed to 'text/html' | Byte size: ZERO

HTTP response: 404 | MIME changed to 'text/html' | Byte size: ZERO

HTTP response: 404 | MIME changed to 'text/html' | Byte size: ZERO

HTTP response: 404 | MIME changed to 'text/html' | Byte size: ZERO

HTTP response: 404 | MIME changed to 'text/html' | Byte size: ZERO

HTTP response: 404 | MIME changed to 'text/html' | Byte size: ZERO

HTTP response: 404 | MIME changed to 'text/html' | Byte size: ZERO

I like em!

Good job at getting good contrast between the shadows and highlights. A lot of B&W shots look flat. These don't. #7 is OOF. It looks like the focus is on her shoes and doesn't look very good.

First photo to me prob shows the most creativity...only because the focus is on the face and everything else blurs from view. It was good she wasn't smiling and the definition in the hair gives the image good contrast. Photo 3,4 would have been better with more of the surroundings and the subject looking elswhere (like lost or seaking solitude), creating that isolation feeling. Photo 6 also subject should not be looking at camera, try some candid shots when you are in a beautiful natural surrounding like this. Get the subject to wander aimlessly and catch her with a 70-200mm or something that you can use from a distance to give the subject room to be herself. Photo 7 could be better if the focus was not on her shoes. Seems like the face is out of focus.

With the right photo, try bring some colours back into your photos. Eg. Photo 7 might look nice keeping the subject b&w and bringing the colour back into the bushes or hay...whatever it was. I still shoot b&W in film and that gives more contrast. Converting colours into B&W only works well if you plan to photoshop the image and introductiong small amount of colours back into the image to create fancy affects.

Thanks for the comments so far. I can't believe that I didn't notice that the camera focused on her boot in 7. That was definitely a mistake and not done on purpose! On 3 and 4, I thought about backing up a bit to get more scenery in, but was afraid that the background would take focus away from my friend. In hindsight, I should have done it both ways. Thanks for that tip! I also like the tip about catching candids with a 70-200mm. I'll definitely have to try that next time.

For background info, these were all shot with my 24-70mm in color. I used Nik Software's Silver Efx plugins for most of these, and a few of the Totally Rad actions for a couple. My friend wanted all B&W, but I may take swo00p's suggestion and add a trace of color to some of these, now that she has what she needs.

Genzbenz, have you seen the Cincinnati POTN thread?

asysin2leads wrote in post #9272624
Genzbenz, have you seen the Cincinnati POTN thread?

I haven't seen this before, but I'm heading right on over to read it! Thanks for the link!

genzbenz wrote in post #9272904
I haven't seen this before, but I'm heading right on over to read it! Thanks for the link!

Anytime. We're trying to get a long-exposure meet-up sometime soon. Keep an eye out for it.

Love 1 & 2. Her feet look awkward in 3 & 4

Digging 1 and 5, the rest are mostly oof, akward and sometimes even flat.
I've noticed the OOF photos isn't because of motion blur (not from your side at least) since you're shooting with fast enough shutter speeds. Check your camera/lens for back-/frontfocus issues though if you're using AF. OOF portraits are unacceptable imo, especially when the 'customer' can compare them with photos from the set that are tack sharp (like #1 and #5).

fyr1296 - I know what you're saying about 3 and 4. I learned during the shoot (my first shoot like this) that I have absolutely no idea how to pose the model. Hopefully, that will get better with experience and research. I'm going to try to join a local photog on a shoot to see if I can learn by watching.

robertn - I'm thinking the OOF issues are more related to the photographer than the camera. It was rather cold, so I was shooting quickly and not chimping. I think my biggest problem was that I was shooting wide open for some of the closeups, and I forgot to close the aperture when I backed up, and got stuck with a narrow depth of field. 7 appears to be a good example of that one. In the original pic, the boots are definitely in focus, but with a shallow DOF, the rest is out of focus. I double checked the EXIF and it was definitely shot at 2.8. Definitely human error I definitely need to be aware of my settings during ALL of my shots!

Thank you both for your comments. I am definitely finding these helpful.