STICKY:  How to photograph a high school Senior

bobbyz wrote in post #12996944
Hawk - nice shots. Pretty girl but her choice of dresses is not good.

Peach, golden yellow or brown would have complimented her much better; not that you can control what clothing they bring, but a suggestion may help to create a better end product.

pre-shoot in-person meeting with senior clients isn't usually on my schedule. I tell them certain style to stay away from, but count on them to pick clothing to compliment his/her skin tones, body, etc. She had a brown outfit, but it was "frumpy" and not flattering. She loved the dress, so client trumps forum.

max3k wrote in post #12991767
Denice.

Great lighting and location. Love this shot.

umphotography wrote in post #12991834
Went to a place called munsinger Gardens last night. Still going through them but its a great spot for portraits. I used the sun on the last shot as a main light and filled with the softbox

I like that you keep the images close to natural. Some additional curves adjustments could help a bit, but I don't think you need to get a graphics artist to go crazy with PP. Just my 2 cents.

hawk911 wrote in post #12994955
just a few from earlier this week

Great natural look and love the freckles. Color of the dress doesn't bother me. Could maybe use a little more contrast and vibrance, but very nice.

JTbandy wrote in post #12995524
A HS senior shot of Caitlin...

I'm learning all of this as I go so all CC is welcomed...

Love the warm tones and the attitude here. Looks like you're off to a great start.

yeah- I did skin work, but didn't touch colors/saturation yet.

locky wrote in post #12967605
futrcndctr, You did a great job on these. There was something about the first one that made me want to do a small edit to it. Here is the before and after.

HTTP response: 404 | MIME changed to 'image/gif' | Byte size: ZERO

What changes did you make? I think I see a sharpening of the hair and eyes, and whitening of the teeth.

Love this thread. Thanks to everyone who has so willingly shared and taken the time to help those of us new to this. Awesome work here!

GerryDavid wrote in post #12997809
What changes did you make? I think I see a sharpening of the hair and eyes, and whitening of the teeth.

a little more color saturation too; look at the blue in her shirt

hawk, forget what these peeps are saying about her dress. its great. she was obviously comfortable in it which made the portraits even better. keep at it

thx. I wasn't worried. What one person likes, someone else doesn't. I've been around here a long time and know how subjective this craft is.

Rocky Rhode wrote in post #12964838
Incredible sunset photograph Mike; one minor thing to watch out for just before you snap a killer shot like this is dirt on the bottom of her feet.

I wouldn't worry so much about the dirt on the bottom of her feet, but I would worry about the bad shadow under her nose, which makes her... er, not small nose look larger. And that's the only problem that I see. Otherwise, I'd try and put some CTO on the flash to make it match the sunset much more closely. Thanks!

umphotography wrote in post #12996833
I do very little post processing. I shoot RAW, import to lightroom, make minor adjustments, remove obvious blems, and smooth when necessary. Very little of anything else. Im more about getting it right in the camera, and minor adjustments after. 99% of the outdoor work i post is not a final product, just the way i would present it to a client for consideration. At that point it gets final processed. Like i say, some skin smoothing when necessary, but thats about it. I can do a lot of the creative stuff in photoshop, but i prefer to shoot it right and present the way it was actually captured.

Hearing this makes a lot more sense now. In my mind I guess it's just a rarity to see such little post work done in todays market.

Sharpened to whole picture, did some noise reduction, whitening of the teeth and did a small amount of overlay in Paint Shop Pro X2 to make the colors pop more.

Allie, there are some of us out there that don't live and die by the photoshop pen. I use some presets, but it's usually not over the top, especially with skin smoothing.

DinosaurioAllie wrote in post #12999955
Hearing this makes a lot more sense now. In my mind I guess it's just a rarity to see such little post work done in todays market.

Most of my shots are almost no processing except LR default. I only remove skin blemishes and that is it. Sometimes some skin softening on the face. It is not hard to do this if:

1. Get exposure correct and little over-exposed then under-exposed so one doesn't need to bring up exposure in pp.

2. Don't play with colors too much and stick with fixed WB. I like plain looks. This could be due to my not knowing all PS/LR tricks on processing.

Here is an example from this weekend. Nothing done except two/three small skin blemish removal. That is it.

matonanjin wrote in post #12991798
Hey Julie,
From one horse shooter to another, these are great. I am in exactly in the same situation in that I am moving into more portrait/senior type stuff so I sure hope you will comment on mine when I post.

My only comment is that I would like to have seen some bend to her elbows rather than just hanging. And I like to have the model loop the reins rather than have them leading out of the photo. Or I will clone them out.

Thanks for the feedback fellow horse shooter I will absolutely give you feedback for what it's worth.