Family Portraits

I spent a very unproductive day at work today scanning through this portion of the forum as portraits in their various forms are the types of photographs that interest me most. While I know that I can't hold a candle to the vast majority of you here, I was inspired to give it a go and dragged by two reluctant models to the park. I definitely know that the shot below have obvious and glaring flaws, but this was my first real go round and my first ever experience with LR. Both were shot on a D5300 with the kit 55-300mm and a Neewer 750ii speedlight for fill where possible.

Any constructive critique will be very much appreciated.





Note: I had two more shots with the 50mm f/1.8 to post out of my terrible keeper rate, but they wouldn't attach here for some reason.

First, keep practicing and shooting. Only through repeated errors can we reduce our errors and improve.

The first photo is soft/blurry. Your shutter speed was way too slow. Your would have been better served to bring up the ISO and get a crisp shot. White balance is off. Too much magenta.

Second is better. White balance looks good. Skin color looks good, but the colors are a bit flat/dull. Push up the vibrance a bit.

There's more that others can add, but I'm not going to pound away on your photos. Keep working at improving a few things at a time so you can see what does what.

I like the second pose, as it gives it a more natural look with feeling! Good first go at it! Sorry but I can't give much constructive criticism since I've done very little portrait work at all!

Not bad for a first effort - I am sure you know where you can improve.

The best rules for portrait work - especially with a kit lens is - I used to try and do this religiously when I first started.

Get as close to the subject as you can with the background as far away as possible and shoot as wide open as you can.

If you look at the first image - you were nice and close, aperture was as wide as you can get on that lens - look at the trees in the background - they are nice and blurry. The chair, car etc don't do much for the image - as I am sure you are aware - but there are good elements there you can work on.

The second image - the subject is way to close to the tree for me. No or very little subject separation. More comfortable pose, although I would have loved to have seen her looking at the camera.

Awesome start to portrait work. Keep it up!

Thanks, everyone. I definitely noticed the softness and focus problems with the first shot in particular. I'm kicking myself for not increasing the ISO to have preserve the shutter speed.

@Moab Man - Thanks for the input. I have gone back and reprocessed, but for some reason they would not attach this morning. I'll put them up later. I certainly see what you were talking about. I seem to struggle with the WB while inside the processing software. It always looks good to me and then seems to be totally off when it is exported.

@kevy73 - Thanks of the tip. I wasn't totally happy with the background at all. I had never been to that park before last night. I definitely don't like the car in the background. I chose that bench because it had some character as opposed to the other bland seating areas. That was probably a bad choice in retrospect. There were other benches where background would have been further away and, therefore, less distracting. I understand your point with regard to the second photo. I took some shots from the second location with the 50mm 1.8, at 2.8 where the tree is less distracting due to the shortened DOF, but the composition and posing was totally off. There was a little distortion as well. The 50mm works pretty well for the baby, but not so much for my wife. I'm going to be picking up an 85mm 1.8 pretty soon. Hopefully that will help me maintain the working distance, allow for the increased shutter speed and maintain a shallow DOF all at the same time.

Thanks again!

Blue_Esq said:

It always looks good to me and then seems to be totally off when it is exported.

Click to expand...

I have a color calibrated monitor for photography, but even then you can be looking at a photo for too long and your eyes will adjust to it and not realize a color is off. I find it best to walk away into another room for a few minutes and then come back to look at it. Another useful technique for me is to crank up the saturation on an image which will really show you what colors are strongest in your picture or if there is a particular cast on the picture.

I'm still having trouble loading the reprocessed versions of the images above, but here is one shot with the 50mm @ f/2.8. It's not my favorite pose, but it porbably came out the best in terms of sharpness and separation of the subjects from the background.