First Senior Portraits

[vcw79]

I'm not a pro, just love my camera and taking pictures. I took some senior photos for a friend. -- My first time photographing someone other than my 2 year old. These were taken mid day under overcast conditions. I'm happy with how they turned out, but is there something I could've done differently to avoid blown out areas specifically her arms? She is very fair, and I was trying not to underexpose her face. Are the areas annoyingly blown out?

50mm A series (Pentax)
f/3.5
1/250
ISO 400 (I think--properties doesn't say and I can't exactly recall)
no flash

[BigFuzzy]

The blown out issue is a classic case of being in too stong/harsh lighting conditions. Even a bit overcast can still be very harsh lighting. You should have tried to find some open shade as that light is very harsh even on her face and killed the shadows which in turn kills the depth of this image.
Or a large reflector.
Or skillfull use of flash to knock down the ambient light a bit.

Had it simply been more overcase or later/earlier in the day, this could have been quite nice. Also, and maybe it's my monitor, but just dailing down the exposure a bit should help (for me)

[ctcook]

BigFuzzy has it spot on for the exposure. The thing that's killing it for me is the pose. If she were angled more it would help tremendously.

[justin_ing]

I agree with the pose. try to always have them standing on a 45 to camera. For a portrait, always have the face closer to the camera than the rest of the body. The arms won't seem as "fair" as her face this way.

For this young lady, I would have probably shot it from a slight higher perspective as well. either you go higher or she goes lower in the frame.

I'm going to take a shot in the dark at your settings since I wasn't there. If you shot this at f4.0 or f5.6 and iso100, 1/80 or 1/60, you may not get as blown out as much. Reflector would have been ideal, but understandable if you didn't have it.