Rachel 2

[Brett and Sara]

This is a pic of my daughter Rachel. There was a bridge beam behind her head that I removed. Is the lighting ok? Composition? Should I have positioned her differently? We are taking her Senior pics and I want them to look...Wow! Any help would be appreciated. Thanks
Camera: Olympus E-500
Exposure: 0.008 sec (1/125)
Aperture: f/6.3
Focal Length: 45 mm
ISO Speed: 100
Exposure Bias: 0 EV
Flash: Auto, Did not fire

[oldwolf]

She seems a bit underexposed. The background is exposed nicely though. You could've lowered your f/stop by a stop and get her exposed a little more. If not lower the f/stop then you could always position a reflector in front of her to bounce light back towards her face a bit.

Cloning out the bridge also left a weird soft halo around her head.

You should also try to rotate her shoulders a bit more to her right but rotate her head a bit more to her left. After that maybe have her lift one shoulder higher than the other. This way there are no straight lines being formed by the body. This also slims her down more.

She IS NOT fat. I emphasize the "IS NOT" part before anyone starts in on me for trying to slim down a model hehe. I'm just stating the above because this is how we shoot people to get their pose more pleasing. You don't want them to be square the camera because those look like mug shots even if they are smiling.

You have a great model and I'm glad she's a willing model. Well at least in the pictures it seems like she's willing hehe. Good start over all though.

[Trader]

When I first looked at the photo something bothered me about the blur on the side of her head but I couldn't put my fingure on what exactly it was. One thing you can do to get that "Wow!" effect that you are looking for is to take the picture around sun rise or just before sun set (I prefer this time) when that golden light is casting on her face. Posing in front of a dark background will sometimes add to the appeal of the photo also. A lot of portraits are taken with longer mm lenses (I like a 105mm prime) if you have one. Hope that helps.

[barabe]

I think oldwolf and trader have great ideas to improve shots and i will try to put them into practice when i do a shooting. For technical stuff, i cannot do any better than them.
I think your model is very nice and that you have some nice shots of her in flickr, especially the ones with the red shirt on and the hair loose, she makes me think of the actress that plays in the Spiderman movies.

[mmeyer]

I agree with what OldWolf and Trader had to say. The only thing I wanted to say is that there are some WOW pics on your flickr page! I really love the one with the flower in sepia. Maybe if you put cropped it so her eyes were more in the top right third it would be a little better but it's really nice as is!

[Brett and Sara]

Thanks guys. I really appreciate your help. Yes, my daughter is a great model....extremely easy to work with. She does have a Kirsten Dunst look about her. She has had people telling her that for a few years now. I especially appreciate the hints on how to do better. We are learning and it has actually been fun doing so.

I, too, was a little bothered about the 'halo' but did this at 5 am this morning when I couldn't sleep. Am going to work a little more on it. My husband, Brett, is the main photographer and I do the most of the computer work on it. That is an interesting learning experience. Thanks again.