Some more portraits...

[deeyas]

I was encouraged by Josh's "Old Salt", to submit these portraits for your critique. This is from a charity event, organized by high school kids, with proceeds going towards cancer research.
I thought I'd dedicate some of my time as a photographer to cover this event and also create a few portraits for the participants. The photographs shown here are part of a series and were used to introduce them on stage.

C&C appreciated.

[dalethorn]

I'd probably crop the second one a little, since the overall tone of the foreground person is darker, and he tends to get lost into the background.  Other than that, these are really good, since you captured some very interesting expressions, which compliment your subjects well.

[RSL]

Sayeed, Both shots are good, though what appears to be toning isn't helping them. Don't crop anything. You need those backgrounds. In fact, I'd suggest using a slightly smaller aperture for a bit more depth of field. These very young faces need more of their surroundings to place them among their contemporaries. I'm not suggesting bringing the backgrounds all the way out, but I'd try to shoot so that you can offset the faces against visible, if subdued, background activity among the other kids.

It's always a pleasure to see someone on here actually shooting pictures of people. Good shooting.

[cmi]

I was encouraged by Josh's "Old Salt", to submit these portraits for your critique. This is from a charity event, organized by high school kids, with proceeds going towards cancer research.
I thought I'd dedicate some of my time as a photographer to cover this event and also create a few portraits for the participants. The photographs shown here are part of a series and were used to introduce them on stage.

C&C appreciated.

..

Very nice images you have there, nice expressions, and the blured posing in the background even adds more interest. Looks they where all eager to be photographed  I like the images.

[deeyas]

Thank you all for your comments!

Russ, I agree with you on the tone...although I am not a heavy user of sepia-like tones, it somehow worked here for me. The organizers wanted something "different", and B&W didn't really work with these kids.

Dale, in the second photo, the guy's long dark hair does seem to loose that separation between the foreground-background tones. I only used one strobe to light the subject, what I should've done was used another strobe to light the people directly behind the subject, this would've also let me stop down the lens a bit.

[dalethorn]

Thank you all for your comments!
Russ, I agree with you on the tone...although I am not a heavy user of sepia-like tones, it somehow worked here for me. The organizers wanted something "different", and B&W didn't really work with these kids.
Dale, in the second photo, the guy's long dark hair does seem to loose that separation between the foreground-background tones. I only used one strobe to light the subject, what I should've done was used another strobe to light the people directly behind the subject, this would've also let me stop down the lens a bit.

Whatever you do with these post-processing wise, you don't lose anything, since what you captured has all of the essentials.  Don't be shy about experimenting, with the camera and the software - experiments are fun for you and us.

[cmi]

Whatever you do with these post-processing wise, you don't lose anything, since what you captured has all of the essentials.  Don't be shy about experimenting, with the camera and the software - experiments are fun for you and us.

Indee, with a good image you can do everything. On the other hand its of course easy to overdo things, at least thats my experience. But that is not the case here. I think this particular toning suits the images very well.