Holiday Portraits of Cousins

[CyN1caL]

Earlier I took some holiday portraits of my cousins that my aunt can use of them for Christmas cards.


The set (which contains 2 more, including two of 19 month old boys) can be viewed here:
Holiday Portaits - a set on Flickr

Lighting for all 3 was:
1 large softbox camera left
1 umbrella low camera right
White foam core low in front of subject for some minor reflection
Shutter dragged to 1/10 for christmas tree light ambient.

Now the question: what should I do differently? I would like to offer doing this (for free) for others, not just family and friends. Anything c&c in relation to how I could light it, edit it, compose it, etc. differently would be greatly appreciated.

[sybren]

It's a lovely shot Did you do any post processing?

Please include the EXIF information, it's quite useful to us.

Composition wise I would certainly remove the white clothy thingy from the background in the left. The horizontal line isn't too nice either as it cuts her head in half, but I can imagine that's hard to get rid off. If she was standing up, try having her sit on a chair. If she was already doing that, have her sit on the ground, or perhaps stand up

[zona5101]

I'd toss in a thought around adding some rim or hair light, even just some light thrown back off a reflector from the main...just enought to add a bit of separation...

[agresbach]

i think you did a good job w/ the lighting and composition overall. one thing i noticed and its very minor is the tint of the colors looks a little bit too warm on this particular shot . i checked out the others you had on flickr and they looked better i thought (very very close though). just a small thing to try. I dont know what you use for post proccessing but in lightroom i just brought down to temp slider a couple notches and looked a little better.
thanks for sharing!

[toddybear]

IMO the light is perfect.
I see two problems with this shot:
- the smile
- the composition

The smile looks forced and that is something I do not like.

The composition is problematic because of the chair, the sock on the left and the way you framed the girl. I think that you cut too much of her hands.