Very new to portraits. Help needed: This is a photo of my beautiful niece. I am very new to portrait photography and hope that you all can offer advice on where I went wrong/right with...

Clicksy Loc: Victoria, Australia

This is a photo of my beautiful niece. I am very new to portrait photography and hope that you all can offer advice on where I went wrong/right with this shot.
I used natural light and 2 soft boxes. My darling niece didn't allow a lot of time as there were more urgent matters to deal with..... Bottle and sleep. I hope to get a lot more practice and improve where I can with all of the advice given.
Many thanks 😄

BHC Loc: Strawberry Valley, JF, USA

Clicksy wrote:

This is a photo of my beautiful niece. I am very new to portrait photography and hope that you all can offer advice on where I went wrong/right with this shot.
I used natural light and 2 soft boxes. My darling niece didn't allow a lot of time as there were more urgent matters to deal with..... Bottle and sleep. I hope to get a lot more practice and improve where I can with all of the advice given.
Many thanks 😄

You nailed the exposure and focus. There is a great catchlight in the eyes and every hair on her head is distinguishable. I also like the subdued contrast. An excellent photograph. Now what are you going to do to try to improve?

Clicksy Loc: Victoria, Australia

Mogul wrote:

You nailed the exposure and focus. There is a great catchlight in the eyes and every hair on her head is distinguishable. I also like the subdued contrast. An excellent photograph. Now what are you going to do to try to improve?

Wow, that has stumped me! I wasn't expecting that.... Thankyou for your kind words Mogul.

lighthouse Loc: No Fixed Abode

First off I have to say that I am not a portrait photographer so specifically I don't know.
But generally ... where did you go wrong?
You stopped before you got an image you were happy with.

OK, so maybe she had to sleep, she had to feed ... but what about that sweet moment between full tummy and lights out. And wait for the wind smile just before the surprise burp.

Clicksy wrote:

This is a photo of my beautiful niece. I am very new to portrait photography and hope that you all can offer advice on where I went wrong/right with this shot.
I used natural light and 2 soft boxes. My darling niece didn't allow a lot of time as there were more urgent matters to deal with..... Bottle and sleep. I hope to get a lot more practice and improve where I can with all of the advice given.
Many thanks 😄

djtravels Loc: Georgia boy now

Mogul wrote:

You nailed the exposure and focus. There is a great catchlight in the eyes and every hair on her head is distinguishable. I also like the subdued contrast. An excellent photograph. Now what are you going to do to try to improve?

Send her to collage :?: :thumbup: :thumbup: :thumbup:

Chuck_893 Loc: Lincoln, Nebraska, USA

First impression, not bad But also first impression my eye goes immediately to the lighting, what we sometimes called (seriously) "monster" lighting in that the light is coming from below, like we used to do with a flashlight held beneath the chin at Halloween :D . There is a kindofa sortofa theory of lighting based on the sun: we live in a system where light coming from above, and a single source, looks natural to us. Anything else, such as a mainlight coming from below, begins to look unnatural. Based on that, pretty generally the "key" or "main" light in a portrait setup should be coming from somewhere at least slightly higher than the subject's head. One thing we were taught to look for was that catchlight. We could learn from it what kind of light was used, and where it was located. I can see from the location of the catchlights that the light is low because the catchlights are low in the eyes. Your niece is darling, and the picture is not at all bad, but next time try getting your mainlight higher, relative to her face, than the bridge of her nose. :-)

Bmac Loc: Long Island, NY

My non-professional portrait novice reaction viewing the image........Adorable!! :D

Rick36203 Loc: Northeast Alabama

Your niece is adorable. Not being a pro I am only able to critique your image by telling you how I would find this image even more appealing. Although I value Chucks advice, I do not find the lighting height to detract much, if any, from the photo. When looking at the eyes I did notice that the light closest to the bottom eyelids appears to mimic a film buildup of some type in the eye. I would remove this in post processing. In fact, everything (and thats not much) I would change can be done with a little PP. A very slight exposure bump on the face to make it even more the focus of attention, warming the skin tone slightly, adding a little more contrast and moving your niece lower in the photo, losing a bit of the carpet. In short, I like your photo and find little to suggest. Here is a sample of the PP I would do on this photo.

Wendy2 Loc: California

Lovely little baby!

As another poster said, the lighting is distracting, the eyes go immediately to the dress, because it is so bright. There is something about the angle or pose that is uncomfortable for me, but I don't know what you could have done differently. Maybe someone else can put their finger on it. It is also a bit too 'cool'. Here is my interpretation

After looking at your original and looking at Rick36203's interpretation, maybe a little bit more black space helps, but just a tiny bit more.

Bmac Loc: Long Island, NY

Wendy's edit looks good to me, the original did look a bit cool and desaturated which became apparent after her PP magic. :)

Rick36203 Loc: Northeast Alabama

After looking at Wendys take on this image I would agree that even warmer skin tones look better. I do like to mask the effect from other areas of the photo. Normally, I prefer to compose a person reclined and facing to the side either in the center or bottom one-third of the image, leaving any negative space to the side or top. (unless, I wanted to show them lying on top of a hill, cloud, etc.). If they are in the top one-third, I find myself wanting to see something of interest below. It may have to do with that reading from left to right and top to bottom habit many of us have. In the original image the child appears to be just slightly higher than centered. Also, on further review, I too noticed the brightness of the dress does compete with the face for attention. This is easily compensated for with a 50% +- multiply vignette and a radial gradient applied to the vignette layer, layer mask. But, I feel I may spend too much time discussing pp and not the image.

Clicksy Loc: Victoria, Australia

lighthouse wrote:

First off I have to say that I am not a portrait photographer so specifically I don't know.
But generally ... where did you go wrong?
You stopped before you got an image you were happy with.

OK, so maybe she had to sleep, she had to feed ... but what about that sweet moment between full tummy and lights out. And wait for the wind smile just before the surprise burp.

You are absolutely right lighthouse, that wind smile would have been a winner. Just timing it right so that I get that and not the surprise burp is something I will try for next time 😄

Clicksy Loc: Victoria, Australia

Chuck_893 wrote:

First impression, not bad But also first impressi... (show quote)

Thank you chuck 893 for your advice. This is exactly what I was after when posting this picture, to learn something that I can apply next time to hopefully improve. My lighting was low as you picked up and I can see exactly what you mean by it needing to come from higher to give a more 'natural' feel to it. Thank you for your advice. Now, I'm off to adjust my lighting pole 😄

Clicksy Loc: Victoria, Australia

Bmac wrote:

My non-professional portrait novice reaction viewing the image........Adorable!! :D

Thank you Bmac, I am a little biased.... But yes she is adorable. Thank you for looking.

Clicksy Loc: Victoria, Australia

Rick36203 wrote:

Your niece is adorable. Not being a pro I am only... (show quote)

Thankyou so much for your reply Rick36203, it is those finer details that I really need to improve on. Your fine tuning really makes a huge difference. Thankyou for your time in responding and offering advice. I love the changes you have made. 😄