>>3587726I don't really want to review each picture but I can give you some tips in terms of post-processing, you seem to be making some beginner mistakes.
The biggest giveaway between a professional photographer and an amateur is the colors. When you shoot people, its incredibly important to get the skin tone right. An overly yellow or greenish saturated skin-tone is really bad. Inconsistent skin-tone on the face (like certain parts are green, certain parts are neutral) are not good. Start the post processing by selecting the skin-tone and decreasing the saturation by a few percentage. When you have a picture with relatively few colors overall and big contrast like
>>3587730 for example, try to make the color of the sweatshirt "pure", but without oversaturating it. Right now its a bit messy. The color processing on this
>>3589108 anon's picture is pretty amateur, but he has the idea.
The other important thing is the curves and levels. Sometimes less is better. Try to restrict yourself. Don't make an S shape. Try to make really really small adjustments when it comes to the highlights, shadows, mids and colors. The most common newbie mistake is messing too much with each value to the point where your picture kind of falls apart in terms of black point, white point, mids and colors are being all over in the different parts.
The other beginner mistake is clarity. Sometimes too much, sometimes too little. My best advice is to live it as it is, or just have it around -5% to soften the details a bit. Don't overdo it.
Don't overdo the retouch on the face either.
Experimenting with harsh lights is a good thing, certainly better than doing some incredibly boring little shadow high school graduation type of light. But it also makes retouching harder. Shadows are inconsistent on the face, details you dont want to see on the face end up easily standing out.
