First b/w portrait

[veritasimagery]

Okay, a bit nervous. This was during my first portrait shoot in a few decades. Shooting my daughter in natural light with a reflector. I think it does pretty good as a B/W, what do you guys think?

Shot using a Canon T31 w/EF-S 55-250
1/200
f5.6
ISO 400
79mm

[veritasimagery]

Should say "Canon T3i".

What I'm looking for is: Is the composition okay? And what about the lighting...should I have used a flash to camera left?

[gturner]

Nice comp, but the bright flowers at the back are pretty distracting. They grab attention and also make her look underexposed.

[Rentham]

I agree with gturner. My eyes go to the flowers first. I'd also try to avoid the dappled light falling on her face and hand.

[itsTylerRandall]

I agree with the others. Her face seems bit bit underexposed and there might be a little too much noise in the background.

[veritasimagery]

Thanks guys, I'll work on toning down the background. Haven't done any editing work on it other than reducing overall brightness and working on contrast in the Canon's DPP RAW converter.

It amazing how different it comes across in color.


Kevin
Veritas Imagery NW

[commongrackle]

I think the photo feels flat, and I agree with the background being too busy. I also feel like the placement of her hands is weird.

[veritasimagery]

She's very self-conscious and un-sure of what to do with her hands, this is kinda her "nervous tick" pose.

Kevin
Veritas Imagery NW

[commongrackle]

Heck, I do that myself! I think it just seems weird because it's just her hands and wrists? I like the fact that she is not facing the camera head on, and she seems lost in thought, perhaps.

[veritasimagery]

Do you think that reducing the brightness of the background would reduce the "noise" and help un-flatten the picture?

Hadn't originally planned on doing portraits, but I've had a number of people ask me to, so I'm still learning how to work with poses and such. Plus I'm just now learning all the "post-shooting" editing software. Primarily I learned to shoot back in the '80s with my Canon A-1 and AE-1 Program cameras and all the processing stuff was done by the film-processing places.

Thanks for all the advice.


Kevin
Veritas Imagery NW