Is This any good

[jujitsu1]

Well I bought a small light kit and finally had chance to use it the other day. It consists off 2 shoot through umbrellas . I placed them in front of the Model to the left and right.


Camera: Sony DSLR-A200
Exposure: 0.017 sec (1/60)
Aperture: f/5.6
Focal Length: 26 mm
ISO Speed: 400
Exposure Bias: 0 EV
Flash: Auto, Fired


What I'd like to now is. Is it any good as other peoples photo's always seems to be better and crisiper than mine.

[GeorgiaPeach]

I like the pose but her legs seem to draw my attention more than her face, which is darker. Also, her black shorts and boots seem to disappear into the background, which again seems to emphasize the legs.

[naeno]

Crop down to just her upper body to bring the focus back up to her face. Create two duplicate layers of her. On one, increase her brightness and on the other, darken the background. Mask the layers so the darker version of the background and her brightened version show. I did this in the image below. I will gladly remove it if you'd like. Please keep in mind I was working with a VERY small image size.

[windrider86]

First thing you have going for you is that you have a wonderful model to work with.
Always step back and look at your entire layout. One of the first things I noticed was her arm is gone! Try posing her with her hand on her hip and her elbow higher up in the air. Sometimes poses seem very unnatural but when preseneted correctly they look very natural.
She's also lying at a tilt and somewhat in a "hole" trying using a more flat surface.
Watch your edges. Her feet are cut off as well as her elbow and part of the background is showing on the one side.
As far as giving technical advice on settings, I am terrible at that so will leave that part of to the master.
In your post processing tho you can sharpen up your images by using the unsharp mask feature or by using a hard pass layer with the blend mode set to overlay

[jujitsu1]

Thank you all for your comments

[jujitsu1]

Originally Posted by naeno

Crop down to just her upper body to bring the focus back up to her face. Create two duplicate layers of her. On one, increase her brightness and on the other, darken the background. Mask the layers so the darker version of the background and her brightened version show. I did this in the image below. I will gladly remove it if you'd like. Please keep in mind I was working with a VERY small image size.

See now this it what I mean this looks ten times better already. How small was the image then as I thought I was only allowed to post them that big.

[mpf777]

I am no professional at this by any means but you might try working with more head shots and upper body shots to start with. They are a bit easier to pose than a full length, in my opinion, and you can start working with different light setup to really get a feel for how different lighting effects the subject. Another thing is be careful when using a short focal length, especially on people, as it can distort areas of the body depending on their position to the camera. A focal length I see suggested for a digital camera with the cropped sensor is about 50mm.
If you have not yet you might check your local library for some books on the subject to give you some ideas. The master lighting guide is one that I have checked out that has a lot of good examples.
Hope that helps some.
Mike

[jujitsu1]

Thank you for your reply