hmmm
ok, it's pretty much all been said before, some fairly harsh, but constructive criticism. I won't comment on the photos in your photostream (I didn't look) as you chose the above picture as the one photo to represent, to us, this photoshoot. And as others have said, based on this photo, I'm not impressed. This is another instance of where you shouldn't show less than perfect work to your clients. It actually was a good idea for a shot and given a slightly different comp, and angle it could have been much better. Also, the skin tone looks off to me but I'm not seeing this from a calibrated monitor at the moment. I do wonder what your white balance was set to.
Stepping aside from the photo and to what you've said to us...
'the camera mis-focused' hmm... I agree, cameras don't typically misfocus. I have seen the autofocus on a camera go bad. But.... it either works or it doesn't. And might I add, your camera has manual focus. What I really suspect is that you're not paying attention to focus points and maybe using two fast of an aperture to make that problem worse.
Several of us might debate the earlier comment where someone said you can't hand hold under 1/60 (without IS that's pretty close maybe a stop slower for me (without a strobe). with IS on I can't tell the difference between hand held 1/60 IS off or 1/15 IS on (even pixel peeping) and regularly take decent shots down to 1/13 even 1/10 somewhat consistently. but I'm generally against rules that don't have exceptions. That being said, you do need to get familiar with your slowest reliable hand held shutter speed. For some it's 1/125 for some 1/60. 1/60 is a good starting point, many of the film cameras we grew up on had a fixed sync speed of 1/60 or 1/125 and a lot of photogs got used to those speeds regardless of flash or being hand held. just look up 125 @ 5.6 hmm... I'm sure I had a point in here somewhere. anyway, find what speed you can reliably take hand held shots at.
Double check your focus points. Make sure it's not set to favor a single point or trying to a-dep and make sure you're using an f-stop that'll give you enough depth of field for your subject. you really have to watch your focus points and f-stop on those fast prime lens. I wish I could blame the camera for a shot of a couple the other day but the camera did exactly what I told it too. It usually does.
"It wasn't the best shoot, (we all have those days) circumstances weren't ideal (when are they?) she was looking away in 1/3 of the shots (you control the shoot), my camera misfocused in probably 1/4 of them (you control the camera), the wind was blowing hair in her face, etc (so use the wind). Bad bad day (that we've established), I tried to postpone a few hours before when the cold front came in, I tried to tell them when they scheduled their shoot a month before that it was a bit late in the season (you're trying to justify it). But they wanted it then (it's your schedule, your shoot, you don't have to press the shutter button). This is not my best shoot (you've mentioned that a few times), but I think they are still good portraits (some are, focus on those and don't show the bad stuff) Apparently, according to a senior who I am really close to, this girl and her mom are not happy and her mom is going to yell at me (wow, that really sounds like high school, maybe a little too much feris buhler in that sentence). I am not afraid (don't be), I am just frustrated and trying to figure out how to balance good business and good customer service- what I should offer, if I should contact them first (if you didn't like these photos, you shouldn't have shown them and told the customer up front), these are my first unhappy customers (that's good) and God knows small businesses can't survive bad word of mouth. If you have any insights, please share!"
Learn from it. At the point that you came here saying it wasn't a good shoot, you admitted that as we're not going to tell you different. The final say in if it was a good shoot is the customer. When you shown them the 15 or twenty best shots how did they react? Showing a customer 40-50 shots with only 15 of them being quality your customer is saying "I don't like that one" more than "I like that one." What you should strive for in showing your proofs is. "I like that one" I like that one better" "I don't like that one as much" "ooh, I love that one" I'd rather have the customer say I like that one ten times than her say "I don't like that one 30 times and "I like that one" 20 times. it's all in there perceived ratio of quality. Showing them more images that aren't quality than images that are makes it look like you take more bad shots than good ones. Which, we all know is true of every photographer, but it's the image you present. (pun intended)
So... now that this is behind you, learn and move on. oh, and figure out why your shooting 24% out of focus. (but don't figure it out on a paid client)..
good luck
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