Portrait attempt for critique!

[gregthedog]

Hello all! I recently had a go at editing (in Lightroom) some portrait shots but I'm still not happy with how they look (especially no.1 and 4). Any pointers you guys could give me would be greatly appreciated!
1.

2.

3.

4.

 

[droj]

No 1 looks like a formulaic graduation shot. No 2 lacks the eyes! In both, the greenery has quite a big and busy presence but seems irrelevant to purpose, distracting. 3 is too cropped and the eyes are too lost. 4, which is the best, is quite sooty about the guy's head but that confers a certain drama, and it has a pleasing informality of pose and composition. In turn, the wall is less busy than the foliage, and mono simplifies further! Good.

 

[Peter B]

Rog has said most of what I would have said, but I'd crop each side of 1 & 2 to concentrate on the guy and lose the black hole on the left! 3 is a good pose let down by dark eyes, but the crop through his hands is awkward and also hides the sax, so it isn't telling that story. My dad was a sax player and I never recall him holding his sax in any of the ways shown here, but especially not the way he is holding it in no 4, which is otherwise good. If the sax is merely a prop for your model to use that's fine, but if it is part of who he is then it might jar with musicians viewing the photos?

 

[gregthedog]

Thanks for your comments guys! I probably should have mentioned that I am actually the model (I'm studying jazz sax at uni) and the photos were taken on a timer (explaining some of the odd framing)! It wasn't exactly an ideal setup but was necessary due to needing to provide basic promo shots for something urgently...
Is there anything else you would recommend doing to make the foliage less distracting in the first two?

 

[droj]

Maybe try a mono conversion? But better a new shoot with somebody else at the camera just for the sake of you looking less statically posed if nothing else.

 

[Peter B]

A combination of being too close to the greenery and probably using a smallish aperture to make sure everything is in focus means that you're kind of stuck with the end result, so that would be a pointer for next time and maybe get someone else to shoot as Rog says. The saturation of 1 & 2 is quite different, especially in the colour of the sax as well as the greenery, and it may be that a mono conversion would work well. There are enough options in LR to allow good separation of the colours/tones to lift yourself off the background, so definitely worth a play!

 

[Peter B]

(I'm studying jazz sax at uni)

Good luck with your course and I envy you for your appreciation of music as I (very regretably) had no talent in that direction!