My 1st Attempt at Portraits

Update:
Overall I was still concerned that my background wasn’t white enough.  Well today, MCP Actions had a blog post about getting white background using actions. I decided to purchase it and try it out.  It did make the background whiter, but I still have more to learn about the actions and other editing.  His skin still looks a little off to me.  In the first edit, he looked too pale (also probably because it’s winter).  I gave him a tan using MCP Touch of Dark action, but I just realized that I forgot to adjust the opacity so that may have helped some.  It’s definitely a trial and error kind of learning curve.
Original:

I decided a while back that I was going to start taking my own kids birthday portraits.  In the past, I’ve only taken them to Sears, Walmart, and Portrait Innovations anyway.  I figured I could do as well as these places.  I ordered the white backdrop and number prop back in October.  I finally decided to give it a try on Friday since Cameron still has his 4-year old picture hanging up, Miriam just had her birthday, and the other ones have birthdays coming up.  I set up the backdrop outside on a north facing wall of our barn, based on this article.  I knew the color wouldn’t be exactly right.  I used some work lights that Craig had in the barn, but I don’t know how much they helped.  All my flash did was cast shadows on the backdrop.  I probably need to work some more on the editing of it, but this was my first stab at it.

Original

Edited

2nd edit