any tips on moms family portraits

[Mollman]

I took these of my mom and her sisters for grandma's eightieth. Dont really like doing portraits but figured i'd help them out. I will post one and link to the other two. Those of you who do portraits please lend helping hand.



people - a set on Flickr

[lillygirl]

I think a closer crop would have been nice. Perhaps a reposition or a reflector could be used to bring more light to the faces and take away some of the shadows. I liked that the outfits all meshed well together and the posing is excellent. Just my 2 cents.

[Mollman]

leaving crop out for now

[naeno]

Ok, big tip for portraits....get your subjects close together. The closeness shows a camaraderie, distance/gaps looks like, "Ooo, I don't want to touch her! She has cooties!" This is something that cannot be fixed in post.

Here my suggestion for this photo (if you want it removed, please let me know and it will be done).



In Gimp, I cropped, duplicated the layer and adjusted color balance, added a transparent layer and painted white over each of them where their skin showed, added a huge gaussian blur (200) to that layer and set the mode to overlay (This added some "light" to their faces), merged that layer down, duplicated the layer, adjusted the color balance to decrease the brightness of the grass because it competed with them, added a layer mask and masked out the lower portion and all of the people, flattened.

If you have any questions, let me know.

[Mollman]

thanks for tips nice work.