Enjoying Autumn with my kids

[STiZzle2010]

These are my three children and my practice subjects lol. CC is welcome as it is the only way I'll get any better

Taken with a Nikon D5500, Nikkor 50mm 1.8G, and edited in Lightroom.
f/3.2, 1/200th, ISO 250, flash fired.
JMH_0095 by Hebee's Visions, on Flickr

f/2.5, 1/200th, ISO 250, flash fired.
JMH_0137 by Hebee's Visions, on Flickr

[Kris V]

Love #2!

[STiZzle2010]

Thank you!

[Shadowman]

Nice set.

[Manfred M]

Nice shots Josh, but overall they are quite flat, so a bit more contrast in post would help. I find that the background is overly bright, but there are limited options as to what you can do now that the image has been taken. A vignette will tone things down a tad but not as much as I would like to see.

As you noticed in a previous posting, having a background and foreground exposed the same gives you a decent, but unexciting shot. As you are shooting with flash; underexposing the background by a stop or even two, while ensuring that your subjects are properly exposed will give you a far richer looking image. I tend to shoot these types of shots on manual and will set my aperture to underexpose the background and bring the flash level up to properly exposure the subjects in the shot. I tend to use an incident light reading with my flash meter to get the subject exposure correctly and use the reflective meter in my camera to measure the overall scene to determine the appropriate background exposure. You can emulate these measurements by using the spot and matrix metering modes and do a bit of trial and error tweaking. Flash drop-off takes care of the rest...

[STiZzle2010]

Nice set.

Thank you!

Nice shots Josh, but overall they are quite flat, so a bit more contrast in post would help. I find that the background is overly bright, but there are limited options as to what you can do now that the image has been taken. A vignette will tone things down a tad but not as much as I would like to see.

As you noticed in a previous posting, having a background and foreground exposed the same gives you a decent, but unexciting shot. Underexpose the background by a stop or even two, while ensuring that your subjects are properly exposed will give you a far richer looking image. I tend to shoot these types of shots on manual and will set my aperture to underexpose the background and bring the flash level up to properly exposure the subjects in the shot. Flash drop-off takes care of the rest...

Haha these pictures were taken the same day as my previous post which explains the same mistake in regards to the background. I'll do better next time, I promise. Thank you for your feedback!

[Mike Buckley]

Very nice compositions. Lacking the attention to details explained by Manfred, adding some mid-tone contrast and a subtle vignette to both images would work wonders.

[IzzieK]

I love it, Josh...You've got beautiful children. I love the smile of #2 very much...

[STiZzle2010]

Thank you so much! His personality is really starting to come alive and I love his smile.