Did a short practice shoot on my friend and his lovely family. I feel like I am finally getting the hand of this portrait thingie.

1.

All of them are very good, but the pose in 7 seems awkward

Wonderful captures and great looking family

Did you use flash for these?

Phil

Thanks Phil! I used flash on the first one, the rest are natural light with a big ass reflector.

The first one has some issues. The faces are unnaturally dark along one side, which really illustrates a lot of work in post to lighten their faces up.

Love the DOF. I agree with jojomon11 about the pose in 7. Good work tho.

Liking the use of light and DOF! What lens and aperture for these?

They don't look that short to me...

haha, thanks for the laugh Josh.

darrenwhitley, I don't know how u came to that conclusion, maybe because of the contrast? But, there wasn't alot done in post to lighten their faces.

MSC:. I used mostly an 85L and 50L during the shoot.

2 is the best of the bunch...with that said my eyes are continually drawn to the 3 hot spots. Eyes will naturally be drawn to the brightest part of the picture. Have you tried cloning them out to see how it looks?

Great shots, I would say you're getting the hang of it too! Hard to even pick a favorite. Nice work.

Ken

Hi,

Quick Comment: When doing a quick view of these, I got the impression that a few of the photos had what appears to be "lightened" faces. Some to the point of looking like they are wearing masks or makeup.

IF you did lighten the faces (such as dodging them), I think it is a bit too much to look natural.

I hope this comment helps you.

Thanks guys, I appreciate the comments and critique.
Steady: I did do a quick mask on the faces and a levels adjustment on some to brighten the faces a bit as I was shooting into the light. I just used a reflector and it wasn't enough. I didn't want to use my flash too much as I prefer the look of natural light.

Hey,

Great set, but I agree with the others with the overly "lightened" faces comments. Number 5 is by far my favorite; great natural light, natural pose, perfect coloring. Sometimes using fill flash stopped down just enough to lighten up your subject won't take away from the natural light look that you are going for.

-Nick

I'll stand by what I said and it appears Steady Hand is noticing the same thing.

The sides of these faces are unnaturally dark. Compare the contrast and darkness on this image to the others of the same family. Also note that right side of the father is lighter by comparison than all others. Even though the mother has the same kicker light, that side of her face is darker in proportion to the rest of her face. Notice that the father doesn't appear to have similar toning of the face.

The only reason I noticed this was that the jaw line of the smallest child is so dark. The level of perfection in the tones in the rest of the photo made this stand out. Mainly, I started to look at the photo for tell-tell signs of head swaps. I do that and sometimes it's more obvious than I like.

Thanks guys for the valuable critique guys. I appreciate it very much! I thought I was actually improving, haha. That's why I love this forum. Back to the drawing board.

Triple sun power?

C'mon Spencer, u know the other 2 are fake.

Wow, those are some cool family shots, especially 2!

Your photos don't suck bro. I always try to be careful not to call attention to the manipulation of tones ever since having the "hand of god" pointed out to me in college.

darrenwhitley wrote:
The first one has some issues. The faces are unnaturally dark along one side, which really illustrates a lot of work in post to lighten their faces up.

Faces look fine to me.....dark ? Where ?