Hi Richard
Welcome (again, I guess) and keep at it. A quick look at those from someone who isn't too far from being a beginner himself and I think you've done pretty well. Focusing is there or thereabouts (hard to see at small res). Exposure in all cases might be a tiny, tiny bit dark for my liking, but that can be personal preference (I quite like slightly overexposed portraits, personally).
Two things I have noticed and are worth commenting on are lighting and white balance. The first one also affects the second, as well, so let's deal with that first. These are indoor shots, so you have to deal with the lighting you have - although you can add more with flash. The key thing with photography is it's pretty much all about the lighting! 1 and 4 are examples where the indoor lighting, although imperfect, does just about work to create natural-looking shots. 4 is perhaps a touch harsh on the cheeks, but 1 is quite a nicely lit shot for indoors (assuming no flash). On 2 you'll see quite big shadows under the eyes and towards the left (as we look) on the subjects - this is because the light is coming quite directionally from the opposite point (above and right). If you'd manage to find a location which provided softer light and which was slightly more omnidirectional, you might have been able to avoid or reduce these shadows. A similar but opposite thing happens with highlights when the light it too bright and harsh from one particular direction.
White balance issues are because the camera doesn't know what colour things *should* be. If you have a yellow bulb lighting the scene, it'll look different from a daylight/bluer bulb. A plain grey card will look non-grey under each lighting scenario. So we have white balance to shift the colour from yellow over to blue and vice-versa. Likewise we have tint for greens and reds. In your pictures, you have a reasonably strong yellow cast for me, which is probably because the hall lights were yellow "bulbs" rather than daylight or whatever.
Sorry that's a bit of a whistlestop tour but I think your photos are great starting points - think about lighting, colour and you can start to see how they affect how an image looks.
Enjoy!
Hello everyone
