First post! 6 month old son...

[Kalyn]

Hey all!

Apologies- I posed this on Lesson 8 in "School of Portraiture;" however, I was unsure that thread was only up for commentary from the administrator. So I have posted here for feedback as well!

So I would love some feedback.



This was my first "formal" portrait session with my son. I feel it has nice balance/color; however, I am unsure about the lighting. I feel detail is lost on the right side of his face where it's darker. I used only natural light by our sliding glass door. Maybe a reflector would have helped? I feel like the eyes could have better lighting, too. That would help enhance the focus on his eyes.

As far as positioning... the fact that his shoulders aren't all in the photo makes it feel unbalanced to me!

I'm completely new to all of this, so my apologies in advance if I ask questions about lingo!

Thanks in advance!

[Goldcoastgolfer]

Night bright eyes, a gorgeous smile, and a background that doesn't distract - looks pretty good all in all

Personally I think the lighting is fine. I'm looking through my work TV so I don't have it calibrated but it's not really that dark at all and the gradual lighting that comes across your son's face serves to make the photo more three dimensional. I think your may be right about the shoulders, although you might find adjusting the crop - perhaps taking some off the bottom might help the balance - I'm not 100% sure.

My one criticism I think is that your focus point appears to be on the very front of the beanie. I can see the texture quite clearly there but by the time I get to your son's eyes they appear to be soft. I'd suggest that is the actual reason why focus doesn't fall on his eyes straight away.

Suggestion wise, you could if you like darken the greens a bit to make your son stand out a bit more from the background, but it's fine as it is too.

Hope this helps!

[kezmal]

What a cutie. Great photo The only thing I would perhaps alter is the green on green, as Mal says perhaps darken the greens, however I'd prefer a little more colour myself.

[kdoc856]

Very, very nice Kalyn. One solution you might play with is cropping on the left and top, right into the hat- it reduces the amount of green background, and really brings the viewers' focus to those perfect eyes. You might add a bit of LCE to lthe eyes, as well. I think you are going to find that child to be extremely photogenic. Well done,

Kevin

[epmi314]

I think you did really well on virtually everything save that darn focal point. Malcolm is right on, it seems the front of the hat is tight and the eyes were missed. The lighting, the color (save a tick more contrast in post processing), his position all work well IMHO.

The wonderful things about this subject are... He's a handsome lad, he looks quite content having his picture taken, you will have plenty of other opportunities and he works for food!

Looking forward to more of your efforts!

[Kalyn]

Thanks so much for the feedback!! I absolutely see it- that the front of the hat is more in focus.. Next time I'll try to focus on that. (haha...) after hearing the suggestion, I see why it would be more visually pleasing to crop it a little tighter, too! @ksoc, what is LCE? Sorry- a little new here. off to wait for the kiddo to wake up again and try some more!

[klobberer]

You must have one awesome camera for him to be drooling over it!

[speedneeder]

Lots of things good here, though the proportions just look odd to me? I don't know if this is a perspective thing or if the eyes have been altered in PP. The blur on top of the hat looks exaggerated to me, was there some added blur here?

[Kalyn]

Haha well... His eyes are just abnormally large- no proportion alterations. The only edits I did were white balance and a little vibrance and did a little skin smoothing for dry skin on his cheek. No extra blur, just a little misguided focus from him eyes to the top of his hat.