My first attempt at a portrait

I would like some advice, I only started photography a year ago and

am interested in shooting portraits for fun. I like to try and see

the beauty in everyone and just need general advice ! This website

has given me enormous inspiration and everyday I get to look at and

learn from the best......

Hi Bridget,

I was a little suprised to see that you took this with a 1/2 second exposure...generally there is a rule of thumb that says that 1/focal length would be the slowest you would want to shoot to get a nice clear image when you handhold your camera...

so with a 100mm lens you would want to shoot 1/100 or faster to keep it sharp, this may be why the image is a little fuzzy...

even if you had the camera on a tripod, at 1/2 second any movement at all from your subject will degrade the sharpness...

hope that's a little helpful ! cheers !

Stephen is unfortunately right on this. I like the pose, it's good, although a bit too conventional for my taste, but it's blurry.

What you want is a big north-side window, where you'll get lots of indirect light from the outside. With some ISO 400 B&W film, you'll get in the 1/100 and above shutter speeds that you need to get this right.

A reflector opposite of the window helps a lot, but since I'm lazy, I take many portraits in a room that we have that has a lightly colored wall opposite of the window that can act as a big reflector (since the room is so small!).