My first family/people shoot

My church asked me to donate my time for a silent auction to help raise money for a pregnancy center in town and I was a little reluctant at first. This is the first real photo shoot that I have done, I have done some "photo booth" style dog photos for different rescues but never anything like this. I have some more editing to do put I am pretty happy with how the pictures are turning out. My wife and I met the family and I spent about an hour taking just over 900 pictures to make sure I had something that I could use. I think my first experience with this was successful and I actually had fun with it (even though I am a really big introvert ).

Very Nice, but did I read this right. 900 images? Is this on one family?

Nice looking family. 900 shots in an hour is a lot of shooting, not to mention a lot of editing. If you're asking for feedback, I'd suggest you try shooting a bit wider to keep from cutting off body parts or crop tighter to cut them off closer to the torso. In the first pic, the husband's foot is chopped off and in the second, the wife's foot is missing. It's OK to compose without the entire body, but you want to avoid cutting off the end of a body part. When I'm in doubt on how to do something, YouTube is my friend.

Yeah 900 is a lot, but without any previous experience I wanted to make sure I could give them at least a handful of photos that they would be happy with. And cutting off appendages is the thing that bothers me most about my pictures. I think I focus so much about not cropping off someones head that I fail to notice the other things that are suffering. I really need to learn to take a second and go back to the basics of composing an image before I start shooting. Hopefully that will come with more experience and work. Thanks for the comments and the feedback.

I think you need to shoot wider.
900 shot is is way to many. Slow down and really frame each shot. Think like a film shooter with limited shots.

Having posed for 900 shots. Your models must have been exhausted.

Yeah 900 shots was a lot but they wanted some candid shots as well so there are quite a few bursts mixed in with the posed shots. A lot of the 900 are just rapid fire shots to see if I could capture a candid shot between their poses. I think my next purchase will be a 35mm lens, or I'll learn how to use my 50mm better .

I think you did a nice job

900 is excessive for 1hr... Some people shoot an average of 750-900 images for a 6hr wedding...I would suggest slowing down more and working on your composition etc.. This will really help..

Some of my more liked photos from the shoot

Well done!

Very nice!!

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Loved the last few pictures! Looking good!

Really need to watch your cropping...

They look good. Good comments.


When the hands and feet get into the picture, watch the positioning. Notice how mom’s fingers look a little long in #1 and dad’s hand and legs look a little big in #2. Not much in either case, and I may see them because hands were always my nemesis. Only other thing I see would be mom’s arm over junior in #1. Switching mom and dad may have allowed keeping junior in front.


#4 is very likable.


Did you by chance do any silhouettes? Slight changes in any of the last three would work. I think swinging junior would work and its hard to beat a couple or family holding hands as the sun sets behind them.