Portrait shots to Improve

[canon400d]

I am learning taking portrait shots and I would appreciate if anyone can give me any advice. I took these shots with a 40D and at 2.8 and ISO at 400. I am looking forward to all kinds of c and c.
Regards
Bob
http://canon400d.smugmug.com/photos/306769846_2absF-L.jpg
http://canon400d.smugmug.com/photos/306769885_NXzKj-L.jpg
http://canon400d.smugmug.com/photos/306769863_86FGq-L.jpg

[lisap]

Hi Bob. I'm still learning myself, so not sure how helpful I'll be.

Out of the 3 I like the first one best. I find the lighting on the left of #2 and #3 to be too bright. Maybe it needed to be difused with something? Also, in #3 I would have liked to see the gentleman's eyes open.

-- Lisa P.

[Moogle Pepper]

They are all very centered. and the 2nd and 3rd ones look like they just washed their face before you took their shots! Also the light in those two coming from their right is kinda distracting.

Definitely a good start!

[beetle8]

keep reading and practicing,
what you have here are some great expressions and thats a great start.

[Swartzy]

First rules to consider: Focus, exposure, custom white balance, composition. Get these 4 corrected at time of shooting and before you know it, a nice portrait appears.

[canon400d]

First rules to consider: Focus, exposure, custom white balance, composition. Get these 4 corrected at time of shooting and before you know it, a nice portrait appears.

Thanks everyone for all your sound advice and tips which I will certainly take on board and I appreciate your replies indeed.
Regards
Bob

[Scott_Quier]

To expand on what Swartzy said:


Focus - As far as I can see, focus is good in all three
Exposure - You have some issues with exposure. Specifically, with balanciing ambient light with your flash. It's pretty good in the first, but in the other two, your shutter speed is a bit slow, allowing the ambient (the table lamp?) to over-power the flash a bit too much and creating a burned out region of the photos along the left side.
WB - You're mixing light of two different temperatures (tungsten and your flash). This makes it quite difficult to get skin tones correct (and they aren't correct in these photos - appears to be too much red/magenta). To correct for this, you can gel your flash with either a Color Temperature - Orange (CTO) or a CTS (straw) gel. This will bring the temperature of your flash more in line with that of the tungsten lighting. Then, set your camera CWB to correspond to that of the dominate light or correct the WB in postprocessing (shooting RAW makes this task much easier).
Composition - they are, all three, a bit centered. Typically, centered shots are BORING. They also reduce the opportunity to include environment in the portrait. Portraits are best, like most photos, when they tell a story. In the case of a portrait, the story is about who the people are - so include something of their environment that provides these sorts of clues for the viewer. Of course, none of this applies to "head-shots" :D.