My daughter & the hay stake

So I took these the other day cause I thought the idea of her sitting on the hay stake would be cute & for some odd reason, she actually suggested I take photos of her!!! (normally I have to plead to get her to be my model.....its a pre-teen thing I guess!!) I shot these in raw and fixed them in lightroom, but I am new to shooting in raw & to lightroom, so I edited them until I thought it looked good. Did I do ok shooting in raw & then editing them? Is the exposure & white balance ok? All c&c welcomed, but please do so in love!! lol Also, I just had to throw one in of my silly 4 year old son, Josiah. He makes the funniest & weirdest faces when I take photos of him....lol


How is this black&white pic?

1. I like this the best, which might say something about the WB in all the other ones?

2. Pose seems awkward .. .

3. a little flat? maybe bump up highlights and contrast?

4. lighting is better, pose still is a little awkward (although now that I'm thinking about it, maybe that's just her age? an awkward pre-teen I'm guessing?) maybe a tighter crop so that the lines of the door aren't as distracting?

5. nice picture of your daughter, the background is a little distracting again.

6. very fun! again, maybe bump the contrast?

I think they are pretty good as far as location and subject, but they all look pretty flat and too dark. With a tiny bit of processing, I think they would be quite good.

This one was auto levels, auto contrast, a Highlights/shadows adjustment and a mild sharpening. 30 second edit, literally. What this means is you probably under exposed quite a bit, but it can easily be fixed in photoshop (I use elements)

before:

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Thank you guys!! Yes I see what ya'll are saying. They do look dark. I guess that before I have had people tell me my photos were over exposed & I guess I was trying to make sure it wasn't too overexposed, yet I made it under exposed...hehe. I really just edit them in lghtroom until I think it looks good, but most times I just auto fix them. I am using a trial verison of lightroom 3 but is there anyway to learn how to edit them them the right professional way? I have tried to google it but no help. I need to learn how to edit my raw photos the correct way. Anyways, yes, she has her good moments of posing & her bad moments of not wanting to pose at all!!! lol. I get what I can. I have one more question.....I have alot of people tell me that my photos aren't in focused and they tell me to put the af point over the eye of the person and I do this but it's hard to work to get that point right on the eye & still get the pose you were after and also, when I do this w/ my af points, it still comes out not sharp enough.....what am I doing wrong???? ahhh!