C&C Portrait

Hello everyone, a friend of mine asked me to take a portrait for his graduation invitation. I am not a professional and don't have any experience with portraits. I am asking for some tips to improve.

Taken with NX300M with 18-55 almost in long end and Metz 44 AF-1. Lightly cropped and edited in LR5.

Ps.: Noted that raw files come a little underexposed, is it normal? Should I set the exposure compensation up a little? Or it's better to bring it up with LR later (that way I protect highlights from blowing up)?

Pss.: This is the only lens I have for this kind of picture.

That's a great portrait, relaxed pose and expression.  The only thing that jars to me is the background, it is too bright and attracts the eye to it instead of the person.  How about cutting out the person and pasting it into different backgrounds to see if you like it any better?

Stan Still wrote:

That's a great portrait, relaxed pose and expression. The only thing that jars to me is the background, it is too bright and attracts the eye to it instead of the person. How about cutting out the person and pasting it into different backgrounds to see if you like it any better?

Thanks. I LR, I exposed the background a little more, it was a little gray and I tought white would be better. I try your idea, thanks for your tip.

From the subpar screen I'm looking at it on right now, it looks good to me. I usually try to show the fingers on both hands but that is just a nit-pick. Nice work.

Hi Axelhawk. I think the picture looks good. As for suggestions, I would say maybe you could try more than one light to sculpt the subject even more. For example, in the grad pic below, having a separate light for key and fill and for shoulder light allowed me to control each one separately.

If you have only one flash you can still use ambient as a second source of light, assuming the color temperature is ok.  In your case, maybe you can use the flash for a shoulder light, and ambient as your key.

Re exposure, you'll get maximum image quality if you expose to the right (just barely avoiding clipping).

Best regards,

Mic