New Joiners - People #393

Really successful portrait as its so authentic. You've made your friend look very approachable and comfortable which is hard to achieve, you obviously connect well. The soft tones and soft focus background have all helped towards the success of the picture.

This is a very iconic image. I love the detail of the hair and the light on the nose giving shape to the profile of her face. There is something that excites me when I see a successful creative image taken with a phone proving that you don't need pro cameras to succeed.

This is great, the movement in the shot has created a cinematic feel and you can almost hear the bikes and sea. Wonderful colours throughout the image and great composition and framing of the bikes. The person on the front bike looking back at the rest of the riders tops it off...

This is a really strange photo! It looks photoshopped together but surely you'd say?! If not those guys are perhaps a little crazy and I prefer the distance you've kept! It's a great photo compositionally with that guy in the centre getting the selfie. Glad you made it home : )

The light on the girls face is terrific, wonderful golden hour sunlight. I can see you've attempted to just have the sky as the background so you could try to retouch the bottom area's out in photoshop if you have it or crop it out as landscape or to a portrait mode which you can do on your phone.

Very well controlled lighting with the use of gels I presume on your lights. Its a great creative shot. I wonder if you introduce another light if you have access to add some backlight to give some separation from the background.

Good studio lighting which illustrates split lighting well. You could also add something reflective to the other side of the face to bring in some detail or underneath the chin to bring out the beard a little and the eyes - could be something simple like some white card. This may help to shape the portrait a little more.

Brilliant, I love this. It reminds me of a film still from Stranger Things or Close Encounters. It looks like its shot on film, perhaps the high ISO creating that grain but it gives the sky a fantastic authentic quality. It's a great shot.

This is wonderful, I love the cropped arm passing the apple to the child. That is a great smile full of gratitude. It works well as it is but you could try cropping to a square format with the child in the centre of frame. Just an idea to strengthen an already great shot!

Having read your 'More details' text it sounds like this shoot was a brilliant technical lesson in both lighting and camera settings.... It can be a mistake to throw lots of lights onto a subject. We can see very quickly that it's not working which as you say causes frustration. You've created something unique here without the need for lights and taken your camera off of auto which is great! If you try the lights again, go minimal. Start with one light only and move it around, diffuse it, shape it with card and what you have around you. Well done this is interesting and something different..

This is a fun creative portrait. I like the glasses reflections and of course the smile! You could try increasing the levels slightly or the shadows to bring some details in to the hair and lift the skin tones a bit if you have photoshop or a similar phone app.

What a great costume, fascinating culturally and visually. It's an interesting portrait, I like his stern gaze to camera. Often the background to a portrait can play a large part and having the teepee's in the background here sets the scene well. You could move your subject away from them slightly so they don't conflict with the person (behind his head) , creating more space for the subject which would give him greater focus as a portrait.

It's great light and a great thoughtful pose the child is holding. You could try some extra post processing work on this, I think it would really help it sing. Adjusting the levels and curves to add a little more contrast would help that lovely golden light shine on her face and bring some detail out in the sea and sand if you have photoshop (or a similar phone app). Lovely shot.

This works really well with the textured backdrop helping the colours to pop out against it. Not sure if the red/orange coordination is intentional but it works well! I might try to have them centre frame against that background and try a shallower depth of field at 3.5 which I see your lens goes too. This would help to soften the background a little more. bringing focus to your couple even further.