At least to me anyways. Finally picked up a dslr after putting it off for so long. A refurbished Nikon D3100 off Newegg. Critique.  

Not bad for the start.

The backlighting makes for a somewhat tricky exposure for the auto system.  A little bit more light from the front left, maybe by a reflector would help liven up the eye area.

I still have a lot to learn. Just found out what the exposure indicator does.

Good start!
The only thing I can add is always focus on the eyes.

 

I used to use the center focus point then recompose the image, but that can be off with large apertures.    The curvature of the lens starts to come into play with very shallow depths of field.

That's where that mid-range aperture comes in. You're hedging your bets that recomposing at f/11 are going to be within your depth of field. Try that with an f/1.2 or even an f/2.8 and you can get into trouble.

True.    I was talking about large apertures (F/1.8-2.2 or so).  
With f/11 its not really an issue.    
Stuff like this.

 

Copy. I assumed you were addressing the aperture settings he mentioned. My bad. That's a nice shot! I rented the Canon 85mm 1.2L and the DoF on that thing is so thin it's incredible. I want to try the 50mm f1.0 but I don't think I'd want to use a lens with such a singular purpose.

Focused eyes and a burry nose would look neat.  

If you want to ensure focus on eyes you need to do the following

IMO its distracting if eyes are not in focus for portrait. I see lots of guys buy a fast portrait lens, crank aperture to F1.4 and bang away. Most likely focus point is often nose on head shot and at F1.4 the rest of face will not be sharp.  Choosing exact focus point is critical on these large aperatures

PRess the "I" info button

Set focus mode to AF-S ( single servo ) . Although it's most likely in Automatic ( AF-A ) it often will go into continuous if it sees any movement )
- this ensures that once you select focus on eyes, and recompose to frame shot it does not change focus ( so long as you don't re acquire focus by letting go of shutter release and depressing again )

Set focus area to AFSingle point . Most likely you are dynamic so it tries to choose what it thinks focus point should be .  Choose focus point with navigation button ( with the arrows in 4 directions )

Just half shutter press with focus point ( most likely you will choose the center one ! )  , then recompose the person / dog and full press shutter. Eyes will always be in focus now

If you want to get creative with shallow depth of field ( lets say F4 or 5.6 or whatever largest aperture your lens can go to )  then put camera in Aperature priority and let the camera determine shutter speed / iso . You want everything in focus  ,then a good starting point is F11 for most common distance to subject

Lastly you are somewhat backlit , so to ensure proper exposure of eyes / face , put your camera into Center Weighted or Spot Metering .  Again just like focus, you may want to use the AE lock button to hold the exposure once you set it to expose for face / eyes depending on how centered the subject is in the backlight

This way, it does not try to determine correct exposure for the entire scene ( which is why you are a bit underexposed on dog but ok background ) , but rather a specific point

It will obviously overexpose the background but face will be properly exposed. You can always knock down exposure with the exposure compensation button after you take test shot

I picked up a 35mm 1.8/f lens today so hopefully I can get him to be calm enough to try out some shots on him with different apertures tomorrow. I'll work on better lighting and metering. I think it was on multi.

Here's 3 more
took trg's advice and used spot metering and auto ISO. First pic I was using a preset manual for WB but i guess just a 2 foot difference was enough to throw off from the sample, so I used incandescent. Wish I used RAW for the first one so I could correct it. I focused on his right eye. Critique please.
2/f with bad WB


2/f


5.6/f

Looking good.  

Good visual with the difference between the f/2 and f/5.6.  Toss in an f/11, then you will have a good idea as to what your apertures will do regarding how depth of field (deep vs medium vs shallow) works into your artistic vision for any given shot.

Tried f11 but it's low light and he moves around too much. I would need flash but I don't like the way it turns out. That's a whole nother beast I know nothing about.

You have two different colored light sources... daylight and tungsten lightbulbs. You can only balance for one.  Pick one or the other and go for it.

Crank up the ISO to get the needed shutter speed.

That is another experiment you need to do: find out how high you can go with the ISO before you start complaining about the grain/noise.

And lightroom has sliders for that.

You can get some interesting effects by cranking the luminosity slider all the way to the right.

I've shot pics at 12800 with my 5Diii and had very usable results with minimal noise adjustment.

Nice practice.  Getting some cool shots.  Have wife hold up a sheet behind the dog to kill the furniture in the background.  White sheet back drop or tame solid lighter shade.  It will look really pro.

I have a D3100
Came here to suggest the 35mm f1.8 prime.

I've got a dog and cat to practice on.  The 35mm lens is great for indoor shots without using the flash.
Sometimes the flash spooks the critters.