My wife's pregnant! (and I need to get good at portraiture)

[bezoing]

Model: Canon EOS Digital Rebel XSi
Shutter Priority
Shutter: 1/100
F-stop: f/4.0
ISO: 800
Focal Length: 27 mm

Hello all!

As said in the name of this thread (and obvious from the above picture), my wife and I are pregnant. Now, that's awesome, but to me as a hobbyist photographer, that means I need to get my act together. I really want to be able to document our little' girl's growth through images, portraits in particular, but I've never really photographed people that much. That aid, can anyone lend some advice/critique my way? Especially regarding composition... I've been using Photoshop for a few years now, and feel pretty comfortable with the post process, but portrait composition is a new animal for me.

Also, this is my first dSLR and only got it a few months ago. If there is any advice you might have from the technical specs found in the EXIF data, I could use any wisdom you may have.

I put up a few other shots up on Flickr, and you can find those here: Flickr: bezoing's Photostream

Again, any critique would be appreciated!

[Fotogreen]

First, I would make her face the other way where the light is coming. Her head is too much down. Check out some pregnancy portraits of other pro photogs and get some ideas on posing.

[Jack Fussell]

Congrats on the new baby! My journey into photography truly began two years ago when we were pregnant with our third and I decided to document the pregnancy. So I can definitely identify with you. I joined some pregnancy groups on flickr when I started to get posing ideas...and we did photos regularly throughout...some successful....some not so successful.

On this photo you had nice lighting...a beautiful subject....I agree with the comment above if she had been turned then the light would have lit up her face better....and whatever is in the background is kind of distracting. Keep shooting...looking forward to seeing more.

[Benji]

Congrats! Your wife is beautiful, and you are blessed. The poster who suggested putting the light on the other side of her is right. Assuming you do this pose again next month, place the main light high and at camera left so it skims across her body, and make sure her hair doesn't obstruct the main light on her right side. A reflector at camera right should be used to bounce some of the wasted main light and redirect it back into the shadows. I would use a large silver one.

Her hands gripping her blouse don't look feminine. When I do these type of shoots I use a strip of soft thin white material folded several times then positioned across her breasts and then gracefully drawn out of frame, then since her hands are not needed to hold her blouse up, I have her place them so they cup her abdomen. I also have them wear white slacks and use a white or pastel background.

Benji