My first portrait session

[asnider3]

This is a picture of my little brother from my first ever portrait session taken this afternoon.



EXIF:
Camera: Nikon D60
Exposure: 1/320
Aperture: f/5.3
ISO: 400
No flash

My wife held a piece of white foam core board horizontal at subject's waist level.

I did some post processing in lightroom too:
crop to 8x10
white balance
increased saturation and contrast
smoothed skin
fixed blemish

we're going out again in a few weeks so i was just wondering if you all had some pointers on what i could fix for next time and/or before i do any more lightroom work.

[FocalFrenzy]

Nice job, especially for your first session. The only thing that I would change is to clone out the top of the stump above your brothers' collar. It keeps drawing my eye away from his face. It's probably because of the light color. I would extend the greenery from the shrubs to hide it. I hope this helps, and I look forward to seeing more of your work.

[vjhoward]

Very nice first portrait shot. Good use of reflector to bounce the light. When you go out again, play with different aperture and shutter speeds. You will get different results in your background. When I am outdoors, I try to get a low ISO also (i.e. 200).

How do you like Lightroom? I am getting ready to test it out, but have been using Nikon Capture NX2 for my post processing.

[asnider3]

thanks for the feedback.

I switched to lightroom from photoshop. i really like it. i find that it's better for working with large numbers of photographs. it can't do some of the more graphic design type things like photoshop but it works well for most of the commonly used tools.

[WooD]

If this is your first, I cant wait to see whats next.

Love the seperation from the background.

[Indigo November]

Very good for a first portrait. I agree with focal frenzy, the stump should be cloned out.
I don't like the skin smoothing, it is very obvious, especially on the right cheek (the viewers right, not his). It was the first thing I noticed, before I even saw the stump. JMO.

[bmSTUDIOS]

As said position him more in front of the olld tree limbs. and turn his head just slightly to his left so hes not facing directly into the lens and then his eyes can look straigh into the camera. will give a little different shadow effect on his face.