first photo shoot with livia

this is my first photo shoot. i think it went well. took 320 pictures and came out with about 65 good ones that i liked. here are a few. feedback and comments and suggestions are welcome.

shot with my 7d and 50 f/1.8

HTTP response: NOT FOUND | MIME changed to 'image/gif' | Redirected to error image by FLICKR

HTTP response: NOT FOUND | MIME changed to 'image/gif' | Redirected to error image by FLICKR

HTTP response: NOT FOUND | MIME changed to 'image/gif' | Redirected to error image by FLICKR

Not bad... a couple suggestions:

Use some fill light. Get a reflector or flash and make the model the brighter object. This will draw attention (make her pop) and reduce the amount of blown-out sky that you have in most of these.

Do a little PP. Of course these are fine for "straight-out-of-the-camera" shots, but there are several small blemishes and things that could be removed (or reduced) to direct attention to her overall beauty, rather than to her imperfections.

As I said, not bad for a first attempt. As always, this is JMHO.

thanks. im still learning some basic PP. my biggest issue i had on some shots was getting good focus with the lens sometime it was hard to make sure her face was in focus so i would close the aperture some to get a deeper focus but wasnt sure if this is something ill get the hang of over time or if i was doing something wrong. i found it hard sometimes to judge if the focus was sharp or not.

and i guess my next buy should be a bounce or reflector as you suggested.

These are a good start, but like it has been said, they need more pop. Also there are some distracting elements in the back grounds. I ran a quick 2 second edit on one.

I agree, these need a little fill and maybe bump up the exposure a little bit in post to give them some pop.

cool i see what you did in the background. and so you guys are suggesting making it more slightly overexposed to make it pop, this is what im getting.

i am planning on getting a diffuser to use on my flash for the time being since i can afford a speedlight. but as i keep going ill invest more. i have only been doing photography for about 7 days or so

Nice start! I recommend you invest in a couple of reflectors (white foam board is a cheap alternative), and bring a couple of friends along to be your lighting assistance. You can buy white foam board at most craft shops. Focus can be an issue. Try setting your camera up so you only use the center focus point. Then point that spot at your model, partially depress the shutter to lock the focus, continue to hold the shutter depressed and the reposition the camera to frame your image. As a rule of thumb, focus on the eyes. After you shoot the image, use the preview and enlarge the image on the LCD and examine the eyes. This will give you a quick assessment of the focus. The last image looks like her hands are in focus but the eyes are soft. This will happen if you let the camera make the focus decision. The 7D is a great camera but you still need to take control. You show so real talent here. Keep shooting!

Hey, you made a great work here... Most of them are good enough to be able to play around with on photshop or Gimp.

Here is a quick edit on one of youre pictures. Becouse of the low resolution on the pictures here on the forum it is limited how good result I can get in a short edit. Sharpening is much more sucessful with better resolution.

What I saw under the edit was that you had the sharpest point in the leaves on the upper right corner and her feet. If the focus point was on her eyes this shot would have been much better.

HOSTED PHOTO
please log in to view hosted photos in full size.

since everybody else is editing the photos i will too haha..

these are good photos they just need some post-processing to help them pop more. here is my rework of the first photo.

i did a curves adjustment, focusing just on the girl and not the background. once the exposure on her is good...the background was obviously blown out so i masked that part back in. then i copied the layer and did a gaussian blur to blur out the front part of the bricks so all the focus goes to her. also added a slight vignette to the bottom corners.

also touched up her skin a little bit with the clone tool and used the stamp tool on the "lighten" mode and 10% opacity, sample under her eye and slowly brush away the bags under the eyes.

awesome, thanks for the feedback guys. i keep learning with everything i shoot and post here.

Good start, definitely work on your PP as many have suggested. Is there a particular reason why you were shooting from below her in all the images except one? Your exposure seems to be consistently underexposed by about 1 stop. Shooting backlite scenes you need to watch carefully on exposuring your model's skin properly. It really helps to use spot meter to set exposure based on her skin. Of course you'd have to watch out for blown out highlight. The other way is to use fill flash.

yea most of the spots we used had her higher than me. and i would crouch while taking the pictures because pictures while standing sometimes dont look quite as nice. and im working on getting a speedlight now to use for some fill. i have started assisting a friend of mine that is a professional photographer and learning the ropes with lighting with him.