Just starting out with portraits...

[Joe A]

This is one of my first real attempts at shots of people. It was shot outside, 100% natural lighting (I don't have any lighting equipment, aside from the in-camera flash). It wasn't posed, I just told her to look around and act natural. So how do the lighting and exposure look? How about the cropping? What else about the shot needs work? Thanks a lot for any advice!



Exif info:

Shutter speed: 1/5
Aperture: f/22
Focal length: 70mm
ISO: 100

[jax314]

I think the composition is nice and I like the wind blowing her hair. However, the picture itself is not sharp where it needs to be. Take a close look at her eyes, especially her right eye...it is definitely blurry and that is one of the first things I noticed.

She may have been moving her head when you snapped this???? A shutter speed of 1/5 is REALLY REALLY SLOW and will show movement very easily.

Other than that, there's a lot of good things.

[Joe A]

Thanks a lot! Yeah I definitely see the problem with the focus... I like this picture a lot aside from that, but unfortunately I think getting one this good was just a fluke. I could probably reshoot it a thousand times trying to fix the focus and still not get it right again

[Exiztence]

It's not bad, I like the composition.
Some tips I can give you are:

- Lower the aperture value (perhaps the lowest it can go depending on your lens).
This will narrow your depth of field and if you focus on the person, the background will be taken out of focus nicely. That way the foliage in the background won't distract viewers from the subject. Another advantage of lowering the aperture value is that you'll increase the shutter-speed, preventing motion-blur.

- Try different metering methods.
If your camera has a spot-metering fuction, use it and meter on the skin of the person. This will make sure the lighting on the skin is perfect (or close to it anyway).
Right now, the lighting on the skin is a bit off.

- Focus on the eyes.
Next: put your focus on the eyes of the person. This is the spot most viewers look at first, so make they're tack sharp.

Check if your camera has the possibility to meter and focus separately. If it can not, just focus on the eyes.

[SusanH1970]

Originally Posted by jax314

She may have been moving her head when you snapped this???? A shutter speed of 1/5 is REALLY REALLY SLOW and will show movement very easily.

Just wondering why you shot at f/22? As the previous poster mentioned, 1/5 shutter speed is super slow.

Opening up your aperture quite a bit more would have let the shutter speed increase greatly, thus getting her into sharper focus, as well as giving the shot some really beautiful bokeh that she would stand out against.

[natek313]

The photo is underexposed. The crop works for me. I might have taken off a little more on the right, but that's just me. There's definitely some white balance issues going on, too. I see a lot of orange and some magenta.

Also, as was already mentioned, you really need to open up that aperture - there is/was no reason to shoot at f/22. That would have sped up your shutter speed and gave you a much sharper image while blurring the background more to give nice separation of your background and subject.

Keep at it!

[rengles]

i like her pose--the look over the shoulder and even the slightly motion-blurred hair. ditto on the above--open up the aperture to get a nice background blur. Also maybe try a tighter crop/focus in more on her face. The green background is great with her red hair. have fun!

[Joe A]

To be honest, I'm not sure what my reasoning was for using such a small aperture. I know I took several pictures out there that day, and I think I may have been experimenting with different depths of field. But I can definitely see how the shot would have been a lot cooler if she was more in focus and the background was blurred. Maybe I'll see if she'll let me drag her back out there to try it again sometime.

Also, I messed around with the image in Photoshop, trying to bump up the sharpness. The updated image is up there now. It's not much of a difference, but I think it's noticeable.