Canon EOS 40D

ISO 400

Aperture f/9

Shutter Speed 1/125

Focal Length 38mm

CRITIQUE

Settings:

The overall exposure of the image looks fine. In post processing I would probably bump up the brightness, but it is a well-exposed image.

Next time you shoot something like this you might consider changing your settings for the following reasons.

Since your background isn’t really interesting, you want to blur it out as much as possible. The dumpster could be interesting in terms of color and texture but that is only on the bottom half of the image. The wood post and the cement wall are just kind of blah. With an aperture of f/9 you are basically getting everything in focus. I’m not sure how low wide your lens opens up, but if you went down to 4.0, that would blur out the background a lot more.

By letting more light in the camera with the wider aperture, you’ll need to close it off in other ways. By dropping the ISO you’ll get a slightly crisper image and you can also increase the shutter speed.

Lighting:

The lighting here looks pretty good overall. There are some bright spots of light falling on his face and neck so next time I would move your subject until they are gone. With the fence not coming all the way down to the ground it is letting in light there that I find distracting. If possible, move your subject so that there aren’t really bright areas behind him to distract the viewer.

Composition:

You composition also looks good. He’s not smack center in the middle of the image. He’s at a little bit of an angle. Next time try to pay attention to the background a little more and you’ll notice things like the green garden hose. I like how he has just enough room around him but not too much.