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I did a shoot a couple of weeks ago of a friend and her family as a practice exercise. I got a few good shots but made a couple of mistakes so will be going back to reshoot again next week. Here are a couple of the better ones. Your thoughts would be appreciated.

D300 50mm Softbox camera right, umbrella camera left.


D300 10-20 @20mm -1.3ev SB800 camera left through umbrella +1ev
The tree growing out of mums head does not really work.


D300 10-20 @20mm

Craig
That last shot is very appealing. Technically your images are not too bad, but a couple of things could be improved. Don't cut the hands out! If you cut the hands out then you are shooting mug shots. Get them to hold hands or use the hands to lock the composition.Also....get them away fro any background so that the background is out of focus. Hope this can help.

These are very promising!! The last is great.

Great tip Matt with the hands i will have to keep it in mind next time I am shooting ppl

I quite like them especially #2. Dynamic composition with some good light.

#1 I think you can play around with ratios a little to bring out a few more shadows to give it more 3D feel. Try moving your lights closer to avoid too much spill into the room which will act as general fill and reduce your contrast.

Matt, Everytime you comment, I learn something!

On the 2nd photo just take note where you placing your off-camera flash. By placing it the way you did, you are creating too much of a dramatic look to the image which is not the way to go for creating a family portrait. Place it more 45 degrees and higher to evenly illuminate the subjects face and to create a catchlight on the boys eye.

Thanks for the comments everyone.

Matt. K wrote:Craig
Get them to hold hands or use the hands to lock the composition.Also....get them away fro any background so that the background is out of focus. Hope this can help.

Thanks Matt
I have an issue with lack of the right length glass so I had them closer to the background than I wanted, but I will use less dof next time. I have seen you comment about hands in the past and I do have some shots where I took that advice on board. What would you suggest about hand placement in the first and third shots, I would imagine I will have to start with wider framing.

devilla101 wrote:On the 2nd photo just take note where you placing your off-camera flash. By placing it the way you did, you are creating too much of a dramatic look to the image which is not the way to go for creating a family portrait. Place it more 45 degrees and higher to evenly illuminate the subjects face and to create a catchlight on the boys eye.

This was a grab shot while I was getting ready. Young Jacob unexpectantly left mum and wanted to check out the camera so I just hit the shutter because it looked good in the viewfinder. It was ashame he was about two steps past the flash.

surenj wrote:#1 I think you can play around with ratios a little to bring out a few more shadows to give it more 3D feel. Try moving your lights closer to avoid too much spill into the room which will act as general fill and reduce your contrast.

I had problems getting the lights correct and only discovered later the the indoor shots were at 1400iso. I had set the camera to auto iso for something else I shot a few weeks ago and did not unset it, the room was a little dark so the camera compensated. Explained why I had to dial the flash back to minimum.

aim54x wrote:These are very promising!! The last is great.

Thanks. My friend and her husband liked quite a few of the shots and we are going to do a reshoot soon.

CraigVTR wrote:indoor shots were at 1400iso

Shikes! I just noticed that you were at f14 ISO1600. That explains everything. One more tip is to set WB to manual. (any setting would be ok as you can just change all the photos in post. setting it to 'flash' is a good starting point, if you have a gray card, you can do a custom white balance)

That looks pretty good for such a high ISO!

surenj wrote:

CraigVTR wrote:indoor shots were at 1400iso

One more tip is to set WB to manual.

Another thing I forgot to do.

CraigVTR wrote:Another thing I forgot to do.

After Cameron quizzed me once, I have made a system for this

1. ISO
2. WB
3. Aperture (Decide on DOF)
4. Shutter
in that order. I usually shoot manual so this works for me. [ I need to do this as my viewfinder doesn't show WB or ISO so mistakes can be made easily]

It may be useful for you to get an order sorted out, and use it each time.

surenj wrote:

CraigVTR wrote:Another thing I forgot to do.

After Cameron quizzed me once, I have made a system for this

1. ISO
2. WB
3. Aperture (Decide on DOF)
4. Shutter
in that order. I usually shoot manual so this works for me. [ I need to do this as my viewfinder doesn't show WB or ISO so mistakes can be made easily]

It may be useful for you to get an order sorted out, and use it each time.

Good to hear that I have helped you out somewhere along the line!

surenj wrote:

CraigVTR wrote:Another thing I forgot to do.

After Cameron quizzed me once, I have made a system for this

1. ISO
2. WB
3. Aperture (Decide on DOF)
4. Shutter
in that order. I usually shoot manual so this works for me. [ I need to do this as my viewfinder doesn't show WB or ISO so mistakes can be made easily]

It may be useful for you to get an order sorted out, and use it each time.

Thanks, excellent advice, it is an easy simple system to follow. I should know about systems as I use system based techniques all the time when training motorcyclists.