WOW! Welded steel... that must be heavy.

There is nothing wrong with building your own plane but not only does this guy not have a clue, I don't think he has even met one.

The first problem that should be obvious to everyone is that it keeps falling apart on the ground. I might be concerned this would happen in the air and lead to some problems with directional control.

I guarantee that no weight & balance calcualtions have been done and he has no idea the center of the wieght needs to be near the center of the lift. Thankfully this beast is going to be too heavy to ever get off the ground.

That being said, he did make the news and lived long enough to be famous in his village. Maybe that was the ultimate goal in the first place.

I really like #5 . . . nice mood, nice light. A smidgen of fill would not hurt, but not really necessary. I'd say this one is a keeper!

On images 1, 2, and 4 the first thing I would suggest is to turn the subjects head more towards the camera. The nose breaking the line of the cheek is considered a no-no.

On images 1-4 the shadows and harsh spectral high lights are a result of the flash being direct, harsh and on-camera. If you don't have a flash cord or remote triggers to get the flash off-camera, then you can swivel it to bounce from a neutral colored wall/ceiling and move the subject so that the light is bouncing back at about a 45 degree angle. If you don't have a neutral colored wall, then it can be reflected from a white sheet, drapes or even a large newspaper taped to a wall. You can even bounce it from an assistant wearing a white shirt . . . anything that will not create a color cast.

There are even some flash modifiers that can give you the effect of an off camera flash, like the Peri-Scoop.
http://youtu.be/JCPhl5jd4rE

With the goal of taking better portraits, I would use the lens that you have for now making sure that it is zoomed out to the full 55mm for the most flattering perspective, and spend a little on some lighting equipment, like a set of remote triggers and an inexpensive, shoot through umbrella. Total cost should be less than $70.00.

Here is an example of a portrait taken with the flash pointing at a far corner of the room where the wall meets the ceiling. (Flash bounced up at a ceiling does not produce nice portrait lighting)

Hope that helps.

Absolutely, Fee Fee! Pride in your work and always striving to do your best is prime. But...don't let that stop you from trying things that may not work! Those things, of course, you must do on "your own dime" or penny, as the case may be.

You can surely do fabulous portraits at the 55mm setting on the lens you own. Ideal would be 75mm to 85mm. Try to shoot at apertures of f/8.0 or f/11.0, when possible, to gain the most image-quality from your lens. But don't quit shooting because you don't have that perfect lens.

Most important is to learn to "see" what your light (and shadow) areas are doing as you shoot. Notice the shadow from the nose...is it creeping down over the lip? Does it make the nose appear larger than it is? Or the shadow from the forehead...is it putting the eyes in shadow, causing your photo to look dull? The better you become at "seeing the light" the better your photos will become, and more people will want to pay you lots of money to photograph them! And believe me, Fee Fee, some of those people will own cameras that you or I can only dream of! But they need YOU to take the magic picture! :thumbup: :thumbup:

You didn't tell us what lens you already have, Fee Fee. You obviously have a wonderful imagination, and that can be your most important photographic accessory.
I used to be partners in a photo studio in Wisconsin. We had the largest camera-room in the whole state jammed with 10's of thousands of $$$ worth of studio strobe-lighting. And yet I would constantly find myself making reflectors of various shapes and sizes out of cardboard, tinfoil and white paint, and devising ways of positioning them both in my photos and out of them. Made me wonder why we spent all the $$$.

I needed a refection the shape of a crescent-moon for a photo of a saxophone one time...out came the cardboard and scissors, some glue and tinfoil, I hung it from a lightstand so I could see the reflection in the horn! Turned out great!

I would always use larger, usually white, reflectors to "bounce" the lights from to create softer shadows. The reflector is much more important than the light itself.

Any lens that allows you to operate from about 6-8 feet away is going to be great, even if it's not the sharpest lens in town. My message to you is: Spend time, not money. Shoot, shoot, shoot! :thumbup: :thumbup: