But there's so much headroom!

Lighting on number #3 and #5 is good.

First off, i want to state that these are merely my personal opinion.

I feel that the lighting on #1 is a little bit too strong. Losing a bit of detail on the skin tones and the shirt itself.. assuming that you shot these with the flash on manual, i would dial down the power by roughly 2/3 of a stop.

On #2, the bright shirt really draws my attention away from the subject, also the lighting difference on her left arm compared to her right feels out of place, try placing a silver reflector on the left of her pointing upwards adding some fill light back onto her hands and her left face.

On shot #4, the patch of her hair seems to come out of nowhere. Adding a reflector to bring a small amount of detail back to the hair seems to help IMO.

Also, on shots 1,2,3 and 4. The pose seems very unnatural and the way you crop are very awkward. Cropping away her hands elbows etc.

Check out this link for some posing tips.
http://www.digital-photography-school.com/what-everybody-ought-to-know-about-posing-for-portraits

Also check out videos episodes 12, 13, 14, 25, 26, and 27. I learned a great deal watching those videos.
http://www.digital-photography-school.com/what-everybody-ought-to-know-about-posing-for-portraits

This post was edited by Eek on Nov 29 2010 02:24pm

I like #1 and #5 verry good keep doing a good job

sup marco

1&4 nice

rest w/o emotions

sorry, no offense at all, rather an advice.. learn first standard portrait stuff before experimenting with anything

uhmmm I dont feel offended but I also think you can´t really judge my knowledge / capability. I think I´m pretty much aware of standard portrait techniques.

I'm not judging your knowledge/capability, but your pictures in this thread. Only good picture here is #5 ant that is pretty classic portrait type. Rest is experiment that didn't worked. Keep working on #5-like pictures, 'cause its only good picture as I stated here. It has all, nice compo, light, emotion, this picture has meaning (only little improvement I would do is crop from right side (like below attached picture) but its completely different quality than other pictures in this topic. Other pictures are just snapshots in compare with this one.

So fyi:

#1. Color doesn't work here, partial knee is disturbing, one finger is unacceptable there, light is just direct flash with hard shades behind head, too much of empty space above head, actually all compo is bad, lighting is bad...
#2. Snapshot, her right hand is overexposed, blown-up whites, bad expression (mouths ready to cry, eyes sleeping - cover her eyes and look at expression of mouth and then cover mouth and check eyes), disturbing background,..
#3. bad compo, "amputated" her right hand, no expression at all, bad use of light (look what makes her shade above her hair), disturbing light on the table from hard light,...
#4. bad compo, cutted fingers, too much space above head and missing more on bottom (at least all fingers should be visible on her left hand along with paper she is reading, that small piece there is disturbing, for good compo you need to show more of it), again amputated her right hand, and least but not last, what is growing out from her head there? light here is okay except huge shade above ear which is disturbing

These annotations above makes me pretty sure that photo #5 is rather random than using of your portrait skills therefore I just repeat. Train and practice classic portrait techniques and when you master it, then you can start experimenting. (fyi again, I started with experimenting after 20 years after my first contact with camera, after graphic design university degree with classical photography and after 13 years of working as photographer).

This is how I think your compo should look like, just quick crop in PS:

4 is great

The lightning worked out great on this one