What went wrong?

[Trekrider]

Please tell me what I am doing wrong. This was my first attempt at outdoor portrait shots and they are really bad. They just don’t seem to have any pop to them. Please help me out here.

[dlanter]

Two words - fill flash

[MRCPix]

fill flash set on high speed sync.

[dbphotos]

Fill flash and white balance seems way off on the last one.

[RightAngle]

I think some levels and tone curve adjustmens to these will help out a lot to get that "pop"

[ara.bentley]

also make sure to really pay attention to backgrounds - #2 has a horses rear-end right next to your subject.

[kenw]

on the 1st, it looks like the camera decided to focus on the hay, her face is quite blurry. I might say camera shake but the hay is fairly sharp.

2nd, as others said: fill flash and watch the background.

3rd: agree, color balance is off (fixable) and it looks like you've got a really small (#) aperture (low Depth of Field) since the horse's face looks sharp enough but hers is blurred.

[123canon]

fill flash and the focus does seem soft to me, of course i'm blind so take it for what it's worth!

[lukehng]

Focus is off .... use selective focus instead of matrix

Color is off... need custom white balance

The horse behind is in the 2nd picture :)

[toverman]

They are soft and underexposed; others have guessed why and have good suggestions. Dappled shade on her face in the second one creates odd patterns. It's hard to shoot flattering portraits in bright sunlight, but you did well to keep her in the shade.

Pretty girl, but the compositions could use a little help. In the first one, the hay is dominant not only because it's in focus but it takes up more of the image than she does. No. 2, horse's rear (mentioned before). Third one, cropping tighter off the right side would make it a much better image (focus on their heads).

[melonheadphoto]

reflector or fill flash. if you use a fill flash set your white balance to flash and your white balance issues should be fixed. also, i have found that using a shallow DOF helps outdoors.

[DeannaD]

I am guessing you shot with your D300 Picture Control mode set to Neutral? If you want a little more color, you "edit" the Neutral mode to boost the saturation a notch or two OR move to Standard (a little danger of a reddish tint to faces).

I agree with Ken ... that hay is super-sharp!!!

Good Luck!
Deanna